"'Wa'al,' he says, 'fust, you step in an' tell her I'm here an' want to see her, and ast her if she won't come right along; an' then you go down to my office an' have these things sent up; an' then,' he says, 'you go down town an' send this'—handin' me a note that he'd wrote an' put in an envelope—'up to the hospital—better send it up with a hack, or, better yet, go yourself,' he says, 'an' hurry. You can't be no use here,' he says. 'I'll stay, but I want a nurse here in an hour, an' less if possible.' I was putty well scared," said David, "by all that, an' I says, 'Lord,' I says, 'is she as bad off as that? What is it ails her?'
"'Don't you know?' says the doc, givin' me a queer look.
"'No,' I says, 'she hain't ben fust rate fer a spell back, but I couldn't git nothin' out of her what was the matter, an' don't know what pertic'ler thing ails her now, unless it's that dum'd bunnit,' I says.
"At that the doctor laughed a little, kind as if he couldn't help it.
"'I don't think that was hully to blame,' he says; 'may have hurried matters up a little—somethin' that was liable to happen any time in the next two months.'
"'You don't mean it?' I says.
"'Yes,' he says. 'Now you git out as fast as you can. Wait a minute,' he says. 'How old is your wife?'
"'F'm what she told me 'fore we was married,' I says, 'she's thirty-one.'
"'Oh!' he says, raisin' his eyebrows. 'All right; hurry up, now,'
"I dusted around putty lively, an' inside of an hour was back with the nurse, an 'jest after we got inside the door—" David paused thoughtfully for a moment and then, lowering his tone a little, "jest as we got inside the front door, a door upstairs opened an' I heard a little 'Waa! waa!' like it was the leetlist kind of a new lamb—an' I tell you," said David, with a little quaver in his voice, and looking straight over the off horse's ears, "nothin' 't I ever heard before nor since ever fetched me, right where I lived, as that did. The nurse, she made a dive fer the stairs, wavin' me back with her hand, an' I—wa'al—I went into the settin' room, an—wa'al—ne' mind.