“Oh, I heap sick!”
“What did you do to your arm, Mother? Did you have the bandage off?”
“Yes, it come off, and I pin him up,” said Ling, who was standing by.
A paroxysm of pain seized the woman, and she writhed.
“It looks exactly like a rattlesnake bite! I saw a fellow once that was bit in the ankle, and it swelled up and turned a color like that,” declared Susie in horror. “Mother, you haven’t been foolin’ with snakes, or been bit?”
The woman shook her head.
“I no been bit,” she groaned, and her eyes had in them the appealing look of a sick spaniel.
Dora and Susie helped her to her room, and though they tried every simple remedy of which they had ever heard, to reduce the rapidly swelling arm, all seemed equally unavailing. The woman’s convulsions hourly became more violent and frequent, while her arm was frightful to behold—black, as it was, from hand to shoulder with coagulated blood.
“If only we had an idea of the cause!” cried Dora, distracted.
“Mother, can’t you imagine anything that would make your arm bad like this? Try to think.”