Vagary of your fever.

There has been no one here but this black girl and me.

No, my dear fellow, your father and mother can't see you yet; you don't want them to catch the fever, do you?
Good-bye.
Do as your nurse tells you, and next week you may raise your head and shoulders a little; but if you don't mind her you'll have a backset, and the devil himself wouldn't engage to cure you." The patient had been sitting up a little at a time for several days, when at length the doctor came to pay a final call, "as a matter of form;" but, after a few pleasantries, he drew his chair up gravely, and, in a tender tone--need we say it?
He had come to tell Joseph that his father, mother, sisters, all, were gone on a second--a longer--voyage, to shores where there could be no disappointments and no fevers, forever.
"And, Frowenfeld," he said, at the end of their long and painful talk, "if there is any blame attached to not letting you go with them, I think I can take part of it; but if you ever want a friend,--one who is courteous to strangers and ill-mannered only to those he likes,--you can call for Charlie Keene.

I'll drop in to see you, anyhow, from time to time, till you get stronger.

I have taken a heap of trouble to keep you alive, and if you should relapse now and give us the slip, it would be a deal of good physic wasted; so keep in the house." The polite neighbors who lifted their cocked hats to Joseph, as he spent a slow convalescence just within his open door, were not bound to know how or when he might have suffered.