"Buddy, you go in and ask Mr. Smith if he could drink a cup of tea. You was vaccinated whilst you were off to school—"
"Somebody sick?" Johnson looked up, poising a knife loaded with mashed potatoes. "You ain't got smallpox here, have you?"
"No!" Lark spoke sharply. "Been a long time since I've saw a case, and I don't hardly believe this is smallpox. Sores break out on the forehead first, as I've heard it. These are on the back—back and shoulders, mostly. You take a close look, Bud, when you go in, and see if there's anything showin' on his face. And, my Jonah, be careful you don't pull down that sheet!"
Bud took the cup of tea that Maw had ready and walked to the door behind Lark. He opened it, letting out a whiff of carbolic acid from the soaked sheet hung straight across the doorway.
"Feller rode in here to-day in pretty bad shape," Lark observed soberly. "Couldn't turn him out, couldn't put him in the bunk house with the boys, couldn't do a darn thing but fix him up comfortable where we could watch him. But I don't hardly think it's smallpox. All the cases I ever seen, the sores—"
Johnson pushed back his chair with a loud scraping sound on the white boards of the floor. White duplicated the sound and the haste.
"I guess we better be goin'," said Mr. Johnson, stooping to retrieve his hat from the floor. "I—you folks better not ride over with us, seein' as you've got sickness. Might spread somethin'—with everybody millin' around."
"That's good sense," chirped Maw. "Lark don't think it's anything ketchin', but that poor feller caught it, didn't he? He don't make no bones of it. No use exposin' the whole country—and you may be mighty sure, Mr. Johnson, that we ain't going to take any chances."
"You let Bud Larkin set right at the table with us, and you been passin' us dishes—that's chances enough for me." Mr. Johnson, herding Mr. White before him, went out and slammed the door.
Maw stood with her head tilted grotesquely to one side, listening. A closed door, in her experience, did not always mean departure.