“What have you done to him now?” he asked, and without waiting to hear her reply went out, flinging the door back with a crash.
It was nearly dark when Doctor Morgan came, but although he was anxious to get back to his office he saw at once that he must stay with the suffering girl.
In the morning he called John out to the buggy and had a little talk with him.
“I feel, Hunter, as if I’d been a little to blame for this thing,” he said as he picked up his lines to start for home. “I thought you’d be able to see that noise and worry were bad for her. I ought to have impressed the gravity of her condition on you and warned you that she must not be worried by that baby. You can see every muscle in her set hard when the bed is jarred. That child’s got to be kept out of there. Those things hurt a woman in that condition like a knife.”
“She’s been awfully cross and cried about everything this week, but she hasn’t complained much—that is, of anything but a little backache,” John replied, fingering the whipstock of the doctor’s buggy and not able to connect the present serious illness with any real reason.
“Little backache!” Doctor Morgan exclaimed with exasperation. “I never seem to be able to get you men to understand that noise hurts a woman sometimes worse than if you’d hit her with a ball-bat. Hurts, mind! It ain’t imagination; it hurts, and will send a fever up in no time. Have I made it clear to you?” he asked doubtfully.
“I guess you have,” John said, relinquishing the whipstock. “She’s been awfully fretful, but I never thought of her being sick enough for this.”
“Well,” the old doctor said emphatically. “You’ve lost the child, and You’ll lose your wife if you don’t look out. You get a girl in that kitchen, and see to it that she tends things without Mrs. Hunter having to look after her. She won’t do another day’s work for a good long time—and mind, I say, You’ll lose her yet if you don’t keep that child off her till she has a chance to get well.”
As Doctor Morgan drove away he said meditatively:
“Think I got him that time. Blamed fool!”