With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of love.
Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart.
"You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?"
"Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?"
When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat face could express.
"You ain't needed here," she said coldly. "If you want to do anything, find a man and send him for the Doctor—quick. If she dies you'll be her murderer."
Mrs. Harkey was subdued by the bitterness of accusation in Sarah's face as well as by Emma's condition. She hurried down the Coolly and sent a boy wildly galloping toward the town. Then she went home and sat down by her own hearthstone feeling deeply injured.
When the Doctor came he found a poor little boy baby crying in Sarah's arms. It was Emma's seventh child, but the ever sufficing mother-love looked from her eyes undimmed, limitless as the air.
"Will it live, Doctor? It's so little," she said, with a sigh.
"Oh, yes, I suppose so!" said the Doctor, as if its living were not entirely a blessing to itself or others. "Yes, I've seen lots of lusty children begin life like that. But," he said to Sarah at the door, "she needs better care than the babe!"