Dolly walked back and forth, around the stacks and the buildings, whipping out the smallest sparks, and then turned towards the house in a stupor of exhaustion. She wanted to lie right down on the warm ground by the side of the straw pile, and go to sleep, but she had enough sense left to reach the house, and make her way to her mother’s room.
“We’re all right, mother,” she said in a husky voice, “the fire has gone by;” and dropping upon the bed, smoke, dirt, boots, and all, she sank into a heavy sleep. Her mother tried in vain to rouse her, so she dragged the shawls over her, and watched anxiously for morning. But as the gray light began to reveal Dolly’s face, she was terrified at its ghastly whiteness, intensified by the soot and smoke which begrimed it. She tried again to rouse her, but Dolly lay in a stupor, and she could only clasp her hands and pray for help. She crept painfully from the bed, and was trying to drag herself to the door, when Joel rode up on horseback, with his wife behind him. She was a stout, red-cheeked young woman, and, springing off without waiting for help, ran to the back kitchen, where there were sounds of some one stirring.
“Miss Dolly splittin’ kindlin’s, I’ll be bound! Joel’s jest that shiftless not to think on’t. My gracious Peter!” she exclaimed, as she suddenly opened the door, and found herself confronted by one of the colts.
She left Joel to settle matters with the colts, and made her way to Mrs. Marshall and Dolly, carrying the poor lady back to bed in her strong arms, as if she had been a baby.
“Don’t you worry about Dolly, ma’am,” she said, confidently, “she’ll sleep it off, and come out all right, and I’ll just take off my things and do for you. I can stop as well as not; our house was burned up, and we just managed to save ourselves, so you see I ain’t got a smitch o’ work to do for myself.”
“Your house burned! Oh, Sarah, how hard that is for you and Joel,” said Mrs. Marshall.
“Yes’m, it’s a kind of a pity, and I’d got the nicest kind of a chicken pie ready for Thanksgivin’. We never see the fire till it was jest ketchin’ holt of us, and then we got on the colt and raced it down the gully to Dickerman’s pond ahead of the fire. We just made a go of it, and set there till mornin’. Says I, ‘Joel, it’s Thanksgivin’ day; be ye right down thankful?’ And Joel he looked at me and says, kind o’ solemn like, ‘Yes, I be!’ And so be I, ’cause we might ’a been burned in our bed, leastways I might, if Dolly hadn’t been so considerin’ as to let Joel come home.”
Sarah had been all the time tugging at Dolly, pulling off boots and coat, and undoing her scorched hair. She bathed her face and hands, and lifted her upon the pillow, but Mrs. Marshall’s terror only increased at seeing Dolly remain perfectly passive, never opening her eyes, and allowing Sarah to lift her as if she were dead. Hour after hour she slept on, only when Sarah raised her on her vigorous arm, and fed her with chicken broth, forcing it patiently into the closed mouth, until at last a little color crept into the pallid face, and the sleep was not so death-like. But even at nine o’clock, when the travelers arrived, Dolly gave them a doubtful recognition. She smiled faintly at the children’s kisses, stared for an instant at her father’s anxious face, and then went on dozing and muttering. Bess stole in and out on tiptoe, the tears dropping down on her pet kitten, and Johnny blundered about with his mouth full of delicious candy his very heart dissolving with grief and gratitude.
Dolly talked about the candy, and Johnny was impressed with the idea that she wanted some, and actually made an attempt to administer a small chunk, but he was not very successful, and Dolly kept on muttering: “The very last night she was here she made them some candy; the very last night; the very last night; but they couldn’t find it; they never could find it; the fire came and burnt them all up; the very last night; the—very—last—night.”
If there had been a doctor at hand, Sarah would have given up her patient to a course of brain fever, with proper deference; but as there was none within twenty miles she was compelled to persevere with her sensible applications of water, friction, and chicken broth, and in a couple of days she had the satisfaction of seeing Dolly laugh in quite a natural fashion at Joel’s story of the gray colt, which was taken from the kitchen with one foot firmly bedded in a pan of molasses candy.