“Oh, Jim! Jim!” sobbed his wife. The little girl was also sobbing now. Sim, realizing that Arden knew more about first aid than she did, took charge of the child.
“He isn’t hurt bad, Mrs. Danton, I’m sure he isn’t,” said Nate with the ready sympathy of one worker for another’s mate. “He just had a sort of a fall and he got bruised a bit and cut up and a hit on the head. But he’ll come around. Mr. Callahan had one of the men telephone for a doctor. Is he here yet?”
“Not yet. Oh, Jim! Poor Jim!” wailed the excited woman.
“Now, he’s all right, didn’t I tell you that, Mrs. Danton? Here, pull yourself together. You’ve got to help this young lady and me carry him in and put him to bed and then get ready for the doctor. Now don’t be fainting on us.” Nate took charge promptly.
“No! No. I won’t faint. But what happened?” Mrs. Danton asked.
“He just fell down an old ash-chute,” Arden said as she and Nate, with the help of the man’s wife, carried him into the little cottage where Sim, comforting the child, had already preceded them.
Just how they managed, Sim and Arden never had any clear recollection afterward. But they succeeded in getting poor Jim upon a bed in a room downstairs opening out of a small but very neat little kitchen. Then, when his wife was undressing him, with the help of Nate, while Sim, in the neat kitchen, was telling the little girl a fairy story, Dr. Ramsdell arrived.
“What’s going on here?” he asked in a bluff hearty voice. He did not know, and had probably not seen before, any of those whom he addressed. But he seemed, as Arden said afterward, “like one of the family.”
“Oh, doctor, it’s my husband!” faltered Mrs. Danton, again on the verge of tears.
“Tut! Tut! None of that!” warned Dr. Ramsdell. “We’ll soon be having your husband on his feet again. A little accident, I was told,” he remarked, and his eyes swept in turn Arden and Nate.