"I'll go home with you," Elizabeth resolved suddenly. "I'll get Judidy, and we'll go and see what we can do."
"Marmer didn't tell me to get no girls," Moses said, doubtfully, "she told me to get Miss Laury Ann."
"I'll be better than nobody, Moses."
"Well, if you do come over to my house, I ain't agoing to wear no bloomer suit."
"Oh, I shan't expect you to," Elizabeth said, hastily.
Judidy was nowhere to be found, so leaving word with Zeckal, the good-natured hired man, to send either Judidy or her grandmother to the rescue as soon as possible, Elizabeth followed Moses to the tumbledown little red house that was his home. On an old horsehair sofa in the middle of the kitchen, which was the first room they entered, a young woman with her blonde hair straggling into blue eyes swimming with pain was lying in a huddled heap. In the middle of the floor was a wash-tub full of dirty water and half-submerged, grimy garments.
"I was trying to git some washing done when the pain struck me," a weak voice said. "I ain't in no condition to receive visitors."
"I didn't come to visit," Elizabeth said, gently. "I came to help."
A spasm of pain racked the sick woman. Elizabeth was down on her knees beside her in an instant.
"You're all corseted up!" she said. "I'm going to rip these things off," for under the trailing, ragged garments that overlaid Mrs. Steppe she was wearing a corset like a board. Elizabeth tore at the strings until she released her.