‘I reckon I can’t leave her to-night,’ he told her.
‘Hadn’t we better send for Harris?’ she asked.
He flared up at once. ‘Harris? . . . I don’t want that Harris poking his nose in my shippon!’
‘Very well,’ she said mildly. She watched him adjust the poultice over Daisy’s throat. The animal was now coughing painfully, and the chill of the night air seemed to strangle her breathing. Marion found it difficult to leave him.
‘There’s no call for you to go catching your death of cold,’ Abner said.
Again she submitted. ‘But I think we’d better take turns with her,’ she said. ‘I’ll go and tell Agnes.’
She left him, and though she could not persuade him to let her take his place she returned from time to time to the byre. He scarcely spoke to her, for the animal’s condition made him more and more anxious. At one o’clock in the morning she came out in her dressing-gown with her dark hair braided down her back for the night. The cow was now a terrible sight. She had sunk down upon the floor of the shed and was breathing in desperate, quick gasps, with her brown eyes piteously upturned.
‘I don’t like the look of her,’ said Abner, ‘not half.’
‘We shall have to send for Harris. He understands them,’ she said.
‘All right,’ he returned, grudgingly.