Elizabeth did not realize that she had done more than waste useful strength on useless tasks. She had yet to find out that it would have been cheaper to have left the entire contents of the cellar to sour or mould than to have worked on after she could do no more in comfort. It took Doctor Morgan to point out to her that farmers and their wives place undue value on a dollar’s worth of milk, and that they support those of his profession at a far greater price than their butter would cost if they fed the milk to the pigs; also that they fill the asylums with victims and give younger women the chance to spend what they have worked to save after they are transplanted to other regions. They had been obliged to send for the doctor at noon.
The name of peritonitis did not impress the young wife with any importance when the old doctor warned her to lie still and rest. The fierce pain was eased by getting off her feet and she was so glad to rest that she took his advice, but she had had no illness and little experience with chronic ailments. He hoped to pull her through without the threatened disaster, but warned her solemnly.
“I’m glad we have you where you can’t carry anything more out of that confounded hole in the ground,” he said savagely. “You’d never quit till you were down, anyhow. Now don’t you lift that child, no matter whether he cries or not.”
He took John aside and talked to him seriously about his wife, and demanded that there be a hired girl procured. John listened as seriously and went to the kitchen and got the supper and prepared for breakfast. He worked diligently and took Elizabeth a dainty bite to eat, but when the question of a girl came up, he had his own say about that.
“I’ll do the work in this house till you can get around yourself, but I never intend to look for a girl in this country again. You’ll be stronger after a bit and then you can look for one.”
He put Jack’s nightgown over his little head and buttoned it in the back while he talked.
“This ’ll pass over, and You’ll be better in a week’s time. I don’t care if you have two girls, so I don’t have to hunt them. Here, Jack, let me slip that shoe off.”
“I can’t seem to get well, though, with the drag of the housework on my mind,” the girl said drearily.
Elizabeth wanted a woman in the kitchen. She lay without speaking for a moment, thinking that as usual she was unable to get the thing that her own judgment demanded. John would wash his dishes clean and keep the cooking and sweeping done as well as she, but she knew that the first day she would be out of bed she would be dragged to the kitchen to consult and oversee continually.
“Doctor Morgan said I might not be able to get around much all summer,” she ventured, exaggerating the words of the old doctor somewhat in her determination to get help at all costs that would leave her free to get well.