She was wide awake now, the cool air on her face banished all drowsiness of body, and Albert's danger roused every faculty of her mind.
"How long was he sick already?" she asked.
"Since this morning. But he has been for a couple of days not so good."
"Where is he sick?"
"He won't eat nothing, and—and he don't know us. He—he—" Uncle Daniel's voice shook. He had had a hard day. He was desperately frightened about Albert, and Aunt 'Liza had not made him more comfortable by insisting that it was a punishment for wanting his sister's farm.
"He will know me," answered Sarah with conviction. Then she began to run up the lane toward the house. She could see a light in an upstairs room, and Aunt Eliza's face was already peering anxiously out of the kitchen door.
"Albert is worse," she called. "He is talking all the time."
Sarah pushed past her into the kitchen. She had not been in the house since she was a little girl,—so entirely apart had been the lives of the two families,—but she knew the way to the stairway door. One after another the natural ills of childhood came to her mind. Albert and the twins had had chickenpox and measles and whooping-cough and mumps, and she had nursed them all. She thought of the dreaded scarlet fever and diphtheria. But there was none in the neighborhood.
She hurried up the stairway, as there floated down a tiny, querulous voice,—
"I want my Sarah! I want my Sarah!"