"He'll come around all right. You can't kill a man as game as that."
Beth clung to the arms of the chair in which they had placed her. "You think—he—he'll live?"
"Sure he will. I've seen 'em worse'n that——"
She sank back into her chair, exhausted. She had never fainted in her life and she wasn't going to begin. But now that all that they could do had been done for Peter, they turned their attention to Beth. She had not known how much she needed it. Her hair was singed, her wrists were raw and bleeding, and her arms, half naked, were red and blistered. Her dress, soaked with mud and water, was partly torn or burned away.
"She must be put to bed here, Mrs. Bergen," said McGuire. "She'll need the doctor too."
Beth protested and would not leave the room until the doctor came. But McGuire, who seemed—and somewhat justly—to have complete faith in the efficacy of his own remedy, gave her some of the whisky and water to drink, while Aunt Tillie washed her face and rubbed vaseline upon her arms, crooning over her all the while in the comforting way of women of her kind, to the end that Beth felt the pain of her body lessen.
It was not until the doctor arrived with a businesslike air and made his examination, pronouncing Peter's condition serious but not necessarily fatal, that the tension at Beth's heart relaxed.
"He—he'll get well, Doctor?" she asked timidly.
"I think so," he said with a smile, "but we've got to have absolute quiet now. I'd like some one here to help me——"
"If you'd only let me——"