There was plenty of food in the house, though not a great variety, and mostly canned goods at that. Betty, who by this time was really faint with hunger, made a hasty lunch from crackers and some cheese before she carried a basin of warm water in to the two patients and sponged their faces and hands. She wanted to put clean sheets on the beds, but wisely decided that was too much of an undertaking for an inexperienced nurse and contented herself with straightening the bedclothes and putting on a clean counterpane from the scanty little pile of linen in a bottom drawer of the washstand in Miss Hope’s room. She was slightly delirious for brief intervals, but was able to tell Betty where many things were. Neither of the sisters seemed at all surprised to see the girl, and, if they were able to reason at all, probably thought she was a neighbor’s daughter.
When Betty had the two rooms arranged a bit more tidily, and she was anxious to leave them looking presentable for she planned to send the doctor on ahead while she found Bob and brought him out with her, she brushed and braided her patients’ hair smoothly, and then fed them a very little warm milk. Neither seemed at all hungry, and Betty was thankful, for she did not know what food they should have, and she longed for a physician to take the responsibility. She had given each a drink of cool water before she did anything else, knowing that they must be terribly thirsty.
She stood in the doorway where she could be seen from both beds when she had done everything she could, and the two sisters, if not better, were much more comfortable than she had found them.
“Now,” she said, “I’m going to get a doctor. No, I won’t leave you all alone—not for long,” she added hastily, for Miss Charity was gazing at her imploringly and Miss Hope’s eyes were full of tears. “I’ll come back and stay all night and as long as you need me. But I must get some things and I must tell the Watterbys where I am. I’ll hurry as fast as I can.”
She ran out and saddled Clover, for she had been turned out to grass to enjoy a good rest, and, having got the proper direction from Miss Hope, urged her up the road at a smart canter. She knew where the Flame City doctor lived; that is, the country doctor who had practised long before the town was the oil center it was now. There were good medical men at the oil fields, but Betty knew that they were liable to be in any section and difficult to find. She trusted that Doctor Morrison would be at home.
He lived about two miles out of the town and a mile from the Watterby farm, and, as good luck would have it, he had come in from a hard case at dinner time, taken a nap, and was comfortably reading a magazine on his side porch when Betty wheeled into the yard. She knew him, having met him one day at the oil wells, and when she explained the need for him, he said that he would snatch a bit of supper and go immediately in his car.
“I know these two Saunders sisters,” he said briefly. “They’ve lived alone for years, and now they’re getting queer. It’s a mercy they ever got through last winter without a case of pneumonia. Both of ’em down, you say? And impossible to get a nurse or a housekeeper for love or money.”
“Oh, I’m going back,” explained Betty quickly. “They need some one to wait on them. Uncle Dick will let me, I know, and I really know quite a lot about taking care of sick people, Doctor Morrison.”
“But you can’t stay there alone,” objected the doctor. “Why, child, I wouldn’t think of it. Some one will come along and carry you off.”
“Bob will come and stay, too,” declared Betty confidently. “There are horses and cows to take care of, you know. I found them nearly dead of thirst, and all tied in their stalls.”