Presently after that the driver spied an opening, of which he took advantage.
They were across the Corso now, the roar and rush of the Carnival dying into silence as they drove rapidly on; and Katy, as she finished wiping away the last of the lime dust, wiped some tears from her cheeks as well.
"How hateful it all was!" she said to herself.
Then she remembered a sentence read somewhere,
"How heavily roll the wheels of other people's joys when your heart is sorrowful!" and she realized that it is true.
The convent was propitious, and promised to send a sister next morning, with the proviso that every second day she was to come back to sleep and rest.
Katy was too thankful for any aid to make objections, and drove home with visions of saintly nuns with pure pale faces full of peace and resignation, such as she had read of in books, floating before her eyes.
Sister Ambrogia, when she appeared next day, did not exactly realize these imaginations.
She was a plump little person, with rosy cheeks, a pair of demure black eyes, and a very obstinate mouth and chin.
It soon appeared that natural inclination combined with the rules of her convent made her theory of a nurse's duties a very limited one.
If Mrs. Ashe wished her to go down to the office with an order, she was told:
"We sisters care for the sick; we are not allowed to converse with porters and hotel people."
If Katy suggested that on the way home she should leave a prescription at the chemist's, it was:
"We sisters are for nursing only; we do not visit shops."
And when she was asked if she could make beef tea, she replied calmly but decisively,
"We sisters are not cooks."
In fact, all that Sister Ambrogia seemed able or willing to do, beyond the bathing of Amy's face and brushing her hair, which she accomplished handily, was to sit by the bedside telling her rosary, or plying a little ebony shuttle in the manufacture of a long strip of tatting.
Even this amount of usefulness was interfered with by the fact that Amy, who by this time was in a semi-delirious condition, had taken an aversion to her at the first glance, and was not willing to be left with her for a single moment.
"I won't stay here alone with Sister Embroidery," she would cry, if her mother and Katy went into the next room for a moment's rest or a private consultation;
"I hate Sister Embroidery!
Come back, mamma, come back this moment!
She's making faces at me, and chattering just like an old parrot, and I don't understand a word she says.
Take Sister Embroidery away, mamma, I tell you! Don't you hear me?
Come back, I say!"
The little voice would be raised to a shrill scream; and Mrs. Ashe and Katy, hurrying back, would find Amy sitting up on her pillow with wet, scarlet-flushed cheeks and eyes bright with fever, ready to throw herself out of bed; while, calm as Mabel, whose curly head lay on the pillow beside her little mistress, Sister Ambrogia, unaware of the intricacies of the English language, was placidly telling her beads and muttering prayers to herself.
Some of these prayers, I do not doubt, related to Amy's recovery if not to her conversion, and were well meant; but they were rather irritating under the circumstances!
CHAPTER X.
CLEAR SHINING AFTER RAIN.
When the first shock is over and the inevitable realized and accepted, those who tend a long illness are apt to fall into a routine of life which helps to make the days seem short.
The apparatus of nursing is got together.
Every day the same things need to be done at the same hours and in the same way.
Each little appliance is kept at hand; and sad and tired as the watchers may be, the very monotony and regularity of their proceedings give a certain stay for their thoughts to rest upon.
But there was little of this monotony to help Mrs. Ashe and Katy through with Amy's illness.
Small chance was there for regularity or exact system; for something unexpected was always turning up, and needful things were often lacking.
The most ordinary comforts of the sick-room, or what are considered so in America, were hard to come by, and much of Katy's time was spent in devising substitutes to take their places.
Was ice needed?
A pailful of dirty snow would be brought in, full of straws, sticks, and other refuse, which had apparently been scraped from the surface of the street after a frosty night.
Not a particle of it could be put into milk or water; all that could be done was to make the pail serve the purpose of a refrigerator, and set bowls and tumblers in it to chill.
Was a feeding-cup wanted?
It came of a cumbrous and antiquated pattern, which the infant Hercules may have enjoyed, but which the modern Amy abominated and rejected.
Such a thing as a glass tube could not be found in all Rome. Bed-rests were unknown.
Katy searched in vain for an India-rubber hot-water bag.
But the greatest trial of all was the beef tea.
It was Amy's sole food, and almost her only medicine; for Dr. Hilary believed in leaving Nature pretty much to herself in cases of fever.
The kitchen of the hotel sent up, under that name, a mixture of grease and hot water, which could not be given to Amy at all.
In vain Katy remonstrated and explained the process.
In vain did she go to the kitchen herself to translate a carefully written recipe to the cook, and to slip a shining five-franc piece in his hand, which it was hoped would quicken his energies and soften his heart.
In vain did she order private supplies of the best of beef from a separate market.
The cooks stole the beef and ignored the recipe; and day after day the same bottle-full of greasy liquid came upstairs, which Amy would not touch, and which would have done her no good had she swallowed it all.
At last, driven to desperation, Katy procured a couple of stout bottles, and every morning slowly and carefully cut up two pounds of meat into small pieces, sealed the bottle with her own seal ring, and sent it down to be boiled for a specified time. This answered better, for the thieving cook dared not tamper with her seal; but it was a long and toilsome process, and consumed more time than she well knew how to spare,—for there were continual errands to be done which no one could attend to but herself, and the interminable flights of stairs taxed her strength painfully, and seemed to grow longer and harder every day.