"Well," he said, "I have at least a notion. A little feverish, for one thing."
He asked a question or two, and then held the child out to her mother.
"Will you take her while I get a draught mixed? I'm not sure that she'll sit down again in her chair."
The child bore this out, for she would neither sit alone nor go to her mother.
"If Mavy goes out I sure go along with him," she persisted.
The man got rid of her with some difficulty and, going out to where his wagon stood, he came back with a little brass-strapped box in his hand. He asked for some water and disappeared into an adjoining room, out of which there presently rose the clink of glass and a slight rattling. Then he called the woman, who gave the child to Alison, and when she came back somewhat relieved in face she laid out the supper. It much resembled the breakfast Alison had made at the hotel, only that strips of untempting salt pork were substituted for the hard steak.
An hour or two later she was given a very rude bunk filled with straw and a couple of blankets in an unoccupied room, and being tired out, she slept soundly. Lying still when she awakened early the next morning she heard the woman moving about the adjoining room until the outer door opened and a man whose voice she recognized as Thorne's came in.
"I'll go through and look at the kiddie, if I may," he said.
Alison heard him cross the room, and when he came back his hostess evidently walked toward the outer door of the house with him.
"You'll have to be careful of her for a few days, but if you give her the stuff I left as I told you, she'll cause you no trouble then," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't see Tom, but we'll have to get on after breakfast."