"I've got to do something," he asserted.
"There's nothing you can do," Dolly Ferrara said wistfully. "He can't be moved. You can't get a doctor or a nurse. The country's full of people down with the flu. There's only one chance and I've taken that. I wrote a message to Doctor Laidlaw—you remember he used to come here every summer to fish—and Uncle Peter went across to Sechelt to wire it. I think he'll come if he can, or send some one, don't you? They were such good friends."
"That was a good idea," MacRae nodded. "Laidlaw will certainly come if it's possible."
"And I can keep cool cloths on his head and feed him broth and give him the stuff Doctor Harper left. He said it depended mostly on his own resisting power. If he could throw it off he would. If not—"
She turned her palms out expressively.
"How did you come?" she asked presently.
"Across from Qualicum in a fish carrier to Folly Bay. I borrowed a boat at the Bay and rowed up."
"You must be hungry," she said. "I'll get you something to eat."
"I don't feel much like eating,"—MacRae followed her into the kitchen—"but I can drink a cup of tea."
He sat on a corner of the kitchen table while she busied herself with the kettle and teapot, marveling that in four years everything should apparently remain the same and still suffer such grievous change. There was an air of forlornness about the house which hurt him. The place had run down, as the sands of his father's life were running down. Of the things unchanged the girl he watched was one. Yet as he looked with keener appraisal, he saw that Dolly Ferrara too had changed.