“With all my heart.”

The doctor then wetted a towel with cold water, wrung it half dry, and applied it to Mr. Eden’s stomach.

This experiment he repeated four times with a fresh towel at intervals of twenty minutes.  He had his bed made in Mr. Eden’s room.  “Tell me if you feel feverish.”

Toward morning Mr. Eden tossed and turned, and the doctor rising found him dry and hot and feverish.  Then he wetted two towels, took the sheets off his own bed, and placed one wet towel on a blanket; then he made his patient strip naked, and lie down on this towel, which reached from the nape of his neck to his loins.

“Ah!” cried Mr. Eden, “horrible!”

Then he put the other towel over him in front.

“Ugh!  That is worse; you are a bold man with your remedies.  I shiver to the bone.”

“You won’t shiver long.”

He laid hold of one edge of the blanket and pulled it over him with a strong, quick pull, and tucked it under him.  The same with the other side; and now Mr. Eden was in a blanket prison—­a regular strait-waistcoat—­his arms pinned to his sides.  Two more blankets were placed loosely over him.

“Mighty fine, doctor; but suppose a fly or a gnat should settle on my face?”

“Call me and I’ll take him off.”

In about three quarters of an hour Dr. Gulson came to his bedside again.

“How are you now?”

“In Elysium.”

“Are you shivering?”

“Nothing of the kind.”

“Are you hot?”

“Nothing of the sort.  I am Elysian.  Please retreat.  Let no mere mortals approach.  Come not near our fairy king,” murmured the sick man.  “I am Oberon, slumbering on tepid roses in the garden whence I take my name,” purred our divine, mixing a creed or two.

“Well, you must come out of this paradise for the present.”

“You wouldn’t be such a monster as to propose it.”

Spite of his remonstances, he was unpacked, rubbed dry, and returned to his own bed, where he slept placidly till nine o’clock.  The next day fresh applications of wet cloths to the stomach, and in the evening one of the doctor’s myrmidons arrived from Malvern.  The doctor gave him full and particular instructions.

The next morning Mr. Eden was packed again.  He delighted in the operation, but remonstrated against the term.

“Packed!” said he to them; “is that the way to speak of a Paradisiacal process under which fever and sorrow fly and calm complacency steals over mind and body?”

A slight diminution of all the unfavorable symptoms, and a great increase of appetite relieved the doctor’s anxiety so far that he left him under White’s charge.  So was the myrmidon called.

“Do not alter your diet—­it is simple and mucilaginous—­but increase the quantity by degrees.”

He postponed his departure till midnight.  Up to the present time he had made rather light of the case, and as for danger he had pooh-poohed it with good-humored contempt.  Just before he went he said: