“They’re bringing him in,” Bridget gasped at last. “He took sick in the office with a stroke. Dr. Ware’s with them. He sez you’re not to see him yet. He sez I’m to keep you in here till he comes—the Doctor, I mean.” Her words came in a tumult of confusion.
“Is—he—dead?” Julie asked. “Bridget, tell me the truth.”
It seemed to the girls that they lived an eternity in the second before the woman said: “No, no, he’s not dead. Whatever made you say such a fearful thing?” She buried her face in her apron and wept bitterly. “He’s tired out and sick altogether, the dear man. I’ve seen it comin’ this long time.”
Hester looked at Julie with a sort of awe. The sound of footsteps in the hall outside penetrated with ominous distinctness into the library.
Julie said tremulously, “Hester, dear, I am going to Dad; they shall not keep us away.”
“No, they shall not. We are not babies; we must go and help.”
“That’s what I wus after tellin’ the Doctor you’d say,” Bridget sobbed, “an’ it’s not for me to be lavin’ you here all alone, an’ me all over the house to onct. But if yez wouldn’t go now, darlin’s. Just wait till he’s took to his room, an’ ’twould be better—indeed, believe your old Bridget, it would!”
The impetuosity of youth in the shock of joy or sorrow is not to be checked. The girls went into the hall, to see a stretcher, on which lay their father, being borne up the stairs, while Dr. Ware and two men, who proved to be trained nurses, brought up the rear of the little procession.
“Dr. Ware,” whispered the girls, slipping up close to him with blanched faces, “we know—we must help, too.”
He took them each by the hand, as if they were little children, and turned them back before they could reach their father’s side.