She had leaped into the machine while she was giving her orders. It described a dizzy circle in the grass, shot down the driveway, and sped screaming along the dusty road. Before the trembling Mary had had more than time to discharge her commissions the car was back with half a dozen strong men, harvesters from the farm just below, crowded into the seats. And when Doctor Ballard turned his sweating horse up the drive half an hour later, Joel and Celia were between hot blankets, and stimulants had already stirred their sluggish blood.
It was eight o'clock before the doctor left. "I've got to see the Packard boy, or I wouldn't go. I'll come back and stay the night through."
Persis nodded. "I'd feel easier to have you in the house. There won't be no need for you to lose your sleep. The spare room's all made up."
Some twenty minutes later Joel roused and spoke. His respiration was hurried and articulation difficult.
"Persis—Celia?"
She understood the syncopated sentence.
"Celia's doing fine, the doctor thinks. She's got a little temperature, but a child's likely to have fever for any little thing."
He waited some time before putting the next question, rallying his strength for the ordeal of speech.
"Don't s'pose—'twould do for me—to see her?"
Persis looked at him with a curious tightening of the lips, in her eyes an unaccustomed blending of tenderness and pride.