But nothing was further than laughter from the thoughts of Eunice Long at the mention of riding for the doctor. It takes a person dwelling in those remote places of the earth rightly to understand what sickness means in such widely scattered communities.
“Oh dear, oh dear! Come for the doctor, have you? Who is bad—one of the children? I am downright sorry for you,” said the little woman, with such kindly sympathy that it nearly broke down Bertha’s self-control.
“Mrs. Ellis has had an accident out riding; I am afraid that she is very badly hurt indeed,” said Bertha, and then she rolled off into the arms of Eunice Long. But as she was more heavy, or perhaps more awkward, than the little woman expected, the result was that they both rolled over in the dust together, and it was a man who was passing that picked them up and set them on their feet again.
Staying for only a brief word of apology, Bertha set off running along the road to the doctor’s house. She was horribly stiff and cramped with her long ride, and her progress was neither swift nor graceful; but the urgency of the case drove her along, and soon she was knocking at the green-painted door which carried Dr. Benson’s modest brass plate.
But, to her intense dismay, the woman who opened the door to her said that the doctor was not at home, that he had been away all night, and might not be home until the next day.
GRACE MEETS WITH AN ACCIDENT
CHAPTER X
The Worst
“Oh, what shall I do? What shall I do?” cried Bertha; and now, under pressure of this new calamity, her overstrained nerves gave way, and, sitting down on the doorstep, she burst into a passion of weeping.