“DO IT.”
He whipped out his lancet.
“But I can't look on it. I trust to you and my Saviour's mercy.”
She fell on her knees, and bowed her head in prayer.
Staines seized a basin, put it by the bedside, made an incision in the windpipe, and got Dick down on his stomach, with his face over the bedside. Some blood ran, but not much. “Now!” he cried, cheerfully, “a small bellows! There's one in your parlor. Run.”
Phoebe ran for it, and at Dr. Staines' direction lifted Dick a little, while the bellows, duly cleansed, were gently applied to the aperture in the windpipe, and the action of the lungs delicately aided by this primitive but effectual means.
He showed Phoebe how to do it, tore a leaf out of his pocket-book, wrote a hasty direction to an able surgeon near, and sent his wife off with it in the carriage.
Phoebe and he never left the patient till the surgeon came with all the instruments required; amongst the rest, with a big, tortuous pair of nippers, with which he could reach the glottis, and snip it. But they consulted, and thought it wiser to continue the surer method; and so a little tube was neatly inserted into Dick's windpipe, and his throat bandaged; and by this aperture he did his breathing for some little time.
Phoebe nursed him like a mother; and the terror and the joy did her good, and made her less desolate.
Dick was only just well when both of them were summoned to the farm, and arrived only just in time to receive their father's blessing and his last sigh.