Even to Guthrie's apprehensive mind, her weight proved most astonishingly light. The small head drooping limply back from the slender neck seemed actually the only heavy thing about her, yet there were apparently only two ideas in that head.
"I'm afraid of Hanlon's Mary, and I don't like Dr. Andrews—very—specially—much," she kept repeating aimlessly. Then halfway to her room her body stiffened suddenly.
"Mr. Donas Guthrie," she asked. "Do you think I'm probably going to die?"
"N-a-w!" said Guthrie, his nose fairly crinkling with positiveness.
"But they don't give you much of anything to eat in typhoid, do they?" she persisted hectically.
"I suppose not," acknowledged Guthrie.
With disconcerting unexpectedness she began to cry—a soft, low, whimpery cry like a sleepy child's.
"If any day should come when—they think—that I am going to die," she moaned, "who will there be to see that I do get—something awfully good to eat?"
"I'll see to it," said Guthrie, "if you'll only put me in authority."
As though altogether indifferent to anything that he might say, her tension relaxed again and without further parleying she let Guthrie carry her across the threshold of her room and set her down cautiously in the creaky rocking chair. The eyes that lifted to his were as vague and turbid as brown velvet.