"What's that?" gasped the woman. "Smallpox? You haven't got such a thing."
"Perhaps not—not yet," Hiram said. Then he told her about his visitor and how he had found Orrin Post in the calf pen.
"And you've been tending him all night, Hiram! You poor fellow!" exclaimed Miss Pringle, bustling forward again.
"Oh! But you must not come here!" cried Hiram. "You find somebody to send to fetch a doctor. I'll stay and look after the fellow now I've begun the job."
"And you don't really know it's smallpox. I'd took nice getting Dr. Marble up here, tellin' him it was smallpox, and then having it turn out to be nothing of the kind. He'd never let me hear the last of it. Let me see this Orrin Post."
"But, Miss Pringle, you must not!"
"Go along! Do you think I'm afraid, Hiram Strong? I guess I'm just as brave as you are."
She pushed right by him and went into the house. The air was warm and close, and she sniffed it energetically.
"If smallpox was much developed you could smell it, Hiram," she declared. "No mistake about that. The poor fellow! How red he is! Looks more like scarlet fever, if you ask me."
She went to the bunk and placed her soft, cool palm on the patient's forehead. Almost instantly his head stopped weaving from side to side on the pillow. He sighed and murmured, asking for water.