The cook had filled a basin with boiling water and was laving Tioka's wounds, while he screamed with the redoubled pain.
I knew it was necessary to do something instantly. But what? I remembered having read in the life of the three Brontë sisters that one of those heroic girls had been bitten by a mad dog, and that she herself, without disturbing her sister, who was ill with consumption, had heated an iron red-hot and had cauterized her own wounds.
“Put an iron in the fire!” I said, pointing with trembling hand to the poker.
The dismayed women did so, and I bared my arm and little Tioka's lacerated shoulder.
But when I had the terrible instrument with its glowing point in my hand, my courage failed. Tioka was shrieking with terror like a poor little maddened creature, and the women were on their knees, weeping and praying.
Alas, I am not a heroine; I threw away the red-hot iron; we bound up the wounds—which, after they had been washed, looked insignificant and harmless enough—and determined to go to Kieff at once and consult a doctor. We went upstairs on tip-toe to my mother's room. She was still sleeping quietly, with her small, pinched face sunk in the pillow.
We did not venture to wake her and tell her our terrifying story. We left orders with the servants that they were to say my father had summoned us to meet him in Kieff; and we started.
All the way I watched Tioka with the deepest anxiety. I also probed my own feelings intently, wondering whether I felt any desire to bark. I cannot say that I did. Also, during the entire journey, I kept on showing Tioka glasses of water, but he did not seem to feel any the worse for them; nor did I. This comforted us a little.
As soon as we reached Kieff I telegraphed to Prilukoff:
“Both of us bitten by mad dog. What shall we do?”