She followed the child to the gate.
“Well, if that don’t beat all!” ejaculated Mrs. Eaton, looking after her with genuine sympathy. “It just seems as if she had a spell to order ev’ry time that girl wants to go anywheres. It’s nothin’ but hysterics, anyway. I’d like to doctor her for a while. I’d souze a bucket o’ cold water over her! I reckon that ’u’d fetch her to ’n a hurry.”
She laughed with a kind of stern mirth and resumed her work.
Demaris hurried home. The child ran at her side. Once she took her hand and gave her an upward look of sympathy.
She passed through the kitchen, laying her roses on the table. Then she went into her mother’s room.
Mrs. Ferguson lay on a couch. A white cloth was banded around her head, coming well down over one eye. She was moaning bitterly.
Demaris looked at her without speaking.
“Where on earth you been?” She gave the girl a look of fierce reproach. “A body might die, fer all the help you’d be to ’em. Here I’ve been a-feelin’ a spell a-comin’ on all day, an’ yet you go a-gaddin’ ’round to the neighbors, leavin’ me to get along the best way I know how. I believe this is my last spell. I’ve got that awful pain over my right eye ag’in, till I’m nearly crazy. My liver’s all out o’ order.”
Demaris was silent. When one has heard the cry of “wolf” a hundred times, one is inclined to be incredulous. Her apathetic look angered her mother.
“What makes you stand there a-starin’ like a dunce? Can’t you help a body? Get the camfire bottle an’ the tincture lobelia an’ the box o’ goose grease! You know’s well’s me what I need when I git a spell. I’m so nervous I feel’s if I c’u’d fly. I got a horrible feelin’ that this’ll be my last spell—an’ yet you stand there a-starin’ ’s if you didn’t care a particle!”