“You had a slight attack of faintness,” said the doctor cheerily, “and they called me in as I was passing, but you're all right now.”
“How pow'ful foolish,” she said, with returning color, but her eyes still glancing at the door, “slumping off like a green gyrl at nothin'.”
“Perhaps you were startled?” said the doctor.
Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away. “No!—Let me see! I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining room, when—everything seemed to waltz round me—and I was off! Where did they find me?” she said, turning to Miss Morvin.
“I picked you up just outside the door,” replied the housekeeper.
“Then they did not see me?” said Mrs. MacGlowrie.
“Who's they?” responded the housekeeper with more directness than grammatical accuracy.
“The people in the dining room. I was just opening the door—and I felt this coming on—and—I reckon I had just sense enough to shut the door again before I went off.”
“Then that accounts for what Jim Slocum said,” uttered Miss Morvin triumphantly. “He was in the dining room talkin' with the new preacher, when he allowed he heard the door open and shut behind him. Then he heard a kind of slump outside and opened the door again just to find you lyin' there, and to rush off and get me. And that's why he was so mad at the preacher!—for he says he just skurried away without offerin' to help. He allows the preacher may be a pow'ful exhorter—but he ain't worth much at 'works.'”
“Some men can't bear to be around when a woman's up to that sort of foolishness,” said the widow, with a faint attempt at a smile, but a return of her paleness.