"You can't help that!"
But she wasn't "gone," at all before it came. All her vitalities charred, to be sure, like a fire-swept woodland, but still tenacious of life, still fighting for reorganization, a little less feverish, a little stronger-pulsed, she opened her eyes in a puzzled, sad sort of little smile when Guthrie shook the great, broad, shimmering gauze-like ribbon ticklingly down across her wasted hands, and then apparently drowsed off to sleep again. But when both men came back to the room a few moments later, almost half the pink sash was cuddled under her cheek. And Hanlon's Mary came and peered through the doorway, with the whining baby still in her arms, and reaching out and fretting a piece of pink fringe between her hardy fingers, sniffed mightily.
"And you sent my man all the way to the wire," she asked, "and grubbed him three whole days waitin' round, just for that?"
"Yes, sure," said Guthrie.
"G-a-w-d!" said Hanlon's Mary.
And, the next week the patient was even better, and the next week, better still. Then, one morning after days and days of seemingly interminable silence and stupor, she opened her eyes perfectly wide and asked Guthrie abruptly:
"Whom did I marry? You or Dr. Andrews?"
And Guthrie in a sudden perversity of shock and embarrassment lied grimly:
"Dr. Andrews!"
"I didn't either!—it was you!" came the immediate, not too strong, but distinctly temperish response.