To please Lucille, Matilda and her grandfather set off for the safety of the country in a wagon with a farmer and his family. (An unfortunate practice popularized, as we learn, by the physician Benjamin Rush.) During the illness, Matilda's mother demands that her daughter be removed to the country to avoid becoming infected with yellow fever too. One doctor after another visits the coffeehouse and, soon enough, they start draining her blood in an effort to cure her. The two have been friends for a long time, but Matilda is starting to see the chap in a whole new, hearts-and-flowers kind of light.Īnyhow, Matilda's very own mother, Lucille, is the next person to fall ill. Around this time, we're also introduced to the ever-so-dreamy Nathaniel Benson, a painter's apprentice, who Matilda runs into at the marketplace. More and more cases of the fever start popping up, and rumors of an epidemic spread through the coffeehouse and across the city. Turns out she came down with a case of the fever, and the next thing you know, she's being buried. One day, the coffeehouse's serving girl, Polly, doesn't show up for work. A typical teenager, Mattie is always in the middle of daydreams, beginning to notice boys and getting into all kinds of arguments with her single mother, Lucille. Eliza, a free black woman, is the coffeehouse cook. She tells Matilda get out of the room so that she doesn't get sick too.Matilda "Mattie" Cook is a fourteen-year-old girl living above a coffeehouse in Philadelphia with her mother, grandfather (a former military man), a parrot named King George, and an orange cat named Silas. Mother awakes and begins vomiting black fluid.Matilda tends to her patient, reads her Psalm book, and dozes off from time to time.Carris and Eliza leaves to go to her brother's family. Lucille remains in a feverish haze, shivering and moaning. Per doctor's orders, Matilda has to bathe her mother every four hours and keep her cool and clean.He reveals that he's on the conservative side of the yellow fever debate and therefore uses the diagnosis sparingly. Rowley declares that Mother doesn't have yellow fever. Rowley to have a look at Mother, even though the guy isn't really a doctor, has dirty hands, and reeks of rum. Grandfather insists that she simply fainted from the heat, but Matilda can tell something is really, really wrong.
Mother is, thankfully, not dead, so Grandfather and Mattie move her inside and put her in bed.
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