“No matter! I'm going. Hurry!”
Myrtella, who was fashioning a dough man, under the personal supervision of Bert, looked up indignantly:
“You don't think you are going out in this storm without no lunch, do you?”
“I can't eat anything, I'm not hungry.”
“That's what you said at breakfast. I ain't got a bit of patience with people that get theirselves sick in bed and be a nuisance to everybody, just for the pleasure of slopping around in the slush on a day like this. I'm going to fix you some toast and a egg, while he's hitchin' up.”
“Go on with the story, 'Telia,” demanded Bertie, carefully bestowing a nose on the dough man.
“Well,” resumed Myrtella, from the stove, casting an anxious glance at Miss Lady who stood at the window impatiently tapping the pane, “everbody was a wonderin' what would be his very first words, an' Dr. Wyeth he sez, 'Don't pester him to talk, jes' let it come natural.' One day me an' the nurse, the stuck-up one I was tellin' you 'bout, was fixin' to spray out his throat, an' he look so curious at all the little rubber tubes, an' fixin's, that she sez, 'You'll know a lot when you leave here, Chick.' And what do you think he up an' answered? Just as smart an' plain as if he'd a been talkin' all his life?”
“What?” demanded Bertie as breathlessly as if he hadn't heard the story a dozen times.
“'Shucks', sez Chick, 'I knowed a lot when I come!'” Myrtella's pride in this first articulation of her offspring was so great that it rendered her oblivious to the fact that the toast was scorching.
“When will you be able to bring Chick home?” asked Miss Lady, gulping down the hot tea with a watchful eye on the stable door.