"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings.
"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm worried about Sally."
Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a glass tube sticking out of her mouth.
"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?"
"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature."
"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried.
"I don't know," she said.
"Oh, Sally—Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me—it's all my fault—and I love you so—My God! what shall I do? I know—"
Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I just swam and swam and swam.
About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and I took the oars, and then we went faster.