The changes
in the invalid were so puzzling, the alternations from better to worse
and from worse to better so frequent, that fear could take no hold upon
the minds of the patient's friends. It seemed such a very slight affair
this low fever, though sufficiently inconvenient to the patient
himself, who suffered a good deal from thirst and sickness, and showed
an extreme disinclination for food, all which symptoms Mr. Sheldon said
were the commonest and simplest features of a very mild attack of
bilious fever, which would leave Tom a better man than it had found
him.
There had been several pleasant little card-parties during the earlier
stages of Mr. Halliday's illness; but within the last week the patient
had been too low and weak for cards--too weak to read the newspaper, or
even to bear having it read to him. When George came to look at his old
friend--"to cheer you up a little, old fellow, you know," and so on--he
found Tom, for the time being, past all capability of being cheered,
even by the genial society of his favourite jolly good fellow, or by
tidings of a steeplechase in Yorkshire, in which a neighbour had gone
to grief over a double fence.
"That chap upstairs seems rather queerish," George had said to his
brother, after finding Tom lower and weaker than usual.
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