"But what's the matter with him?" demanded Mrs. Peckinpaw again.
"Is it ketchin'?"
"He has a compound fracture of the tibia," declared the cheerful man.
"Oh! My mercy!" ejaculated Mrs. Peckinpaw, shrinking away from the stretcher. "I—I didn't kmow Mr. Day drank!"
She had evidently heard alcoholism called by so many queer sounding terms that anything she not understand she set down to that dread trouble. But Miss Peckham had run ahead into the house.
"Take him right up to his bedroom," she said commandingly to the men with the stretcher.
"Well, if that woman's goin' to take hold, they don't need me," said Mrs. Peckinpaw, snappishly, and she retained her stand upon the strictly neutral ground of the sidewalk.
Mrs. Arlo Weeks was "all of a quiver," as she herself said. She followed the men as far as the steps and there sank to a seat.
"My, my! I feel just like fainting," she murmured.
Meanwhile the two uniformed men were carrying Mr. Day into the house.
"Right up here!" cried Miss Peckham from the stairway.