“And you'll take others with you?” she pleaded, but the mayor was gone. Again she waited in great anxiety. The tent was too far away for her to go out into the night in search of him.
Between eleven and twelve o'clock she heard footsteps. She rose and went to the door. Almost she expected to see her husband brought home on a stretcher. But there he came, walking with buoyant step. When he came in he kissed his anxious wife and then broke into a laugh.
“My! how good that sounds! I heard of the mob and have been frightened out of my wits.”
“They've quieted down now. There wasn't a bit of sense in what they did.”
“Well, I don't know that one can really blame them for not wanting smallpox brought into the neighborhood. Couldn't you have taken the tent farther out?”
“Yes, if we had had time. But we had a sick man on our hands—he had to be got out of the hotel and he had to be taken care of right away. He had to have a nurse. There must be water in the tent and the nurse can't be running out of a pest-house to get it. Neither can anyone carry it to such a place. So we couldn't put it beyond the water- and gas-pipes—there must be heat, too, you know. We have done the very best we could without more time. The nearest house is fifty yards away and there's absolutely no danger if the people down there will just get vaccinated and then keep away from the tent.”
“They surely will do that.”
“Some of them may. One fool said to me awhile ago when I told them that, ‘Oh, yes! we see your game. You want to get a lot of money out of us.’”
“What did you say to that ancient charge,” asked Mary, smiling.
“I said, ‘My man, I'll pay for the virus, and I'll vaccinate everyone of you, and everyone in that neighborhood and it won't cost you a cent’.”