"I just told that man out there I'm going to take you back home."
Mary Gage sat silent for a time. "We'll have to get a better solution than that."
"It's a fine little solution you've got so far, ain't it now?" commented Annie. "Highbrows always have to lean on the lowbrows, more or less. You listen to me."
"Sometime, I suppose," she went on after a moment's pause, "I'll have to talk right out with you. For instance, you being a farmer's wife! Now, as for me, I was raised on a farm. When I was ten years old I was milking five cows every day. When I was twelve I was sitting up at night knitting socks for the other kids. That was before I got the idea of going to the white lights after my career. Well, it's lucky I met you, like enough. But me once talking of getting married to Charlie Dorenwald! I should admire to see him, me handy to a flat iron."
"But, Annie, I'd die if it wasn't for some one to help me all the time. Some pay for that with money. How can I pay for it at all? Tell me, Annie." She turned suddenly. "If I—if I could get my eyesight back again, what ought I to do?"
"I wouldn't talk about that, Sis, if I was you. But just wait, there's some one coming—it's him."
Mary could hear Sim Gage's rapid step as he came around to the door, pausing no more than to throw down his horse's bridle over its head.
Sim Gage was excited. "Where's the Doc?—he been here this morning?"
"He went away less than an hour ago," replied Mary Gage. "How long was it, Annie? Why?"
"Well, I got to go down to the dam. Something up in the hills I don't like."