Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his side, shivering with fear and weeping silently.
The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife, after about ten o'clock, said:—
"Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back. I'll run right down and right back."
After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening, waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet.
The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window.
She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared child was in her voice.
"Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I need you, Serry! I didn't mean to be mean; I want to see you so! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come quick!"
Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below.
"Emmy, where are you, Emmy?"
"Here I be, Serry."