“You make me nervous, trying so hard to keep quiet,” she said to Slim.
The boys went out.
Migwan made some lemon jelly for Hercules and Sahwah carried it out to him.
“Does he still believe he’s dying?” asked Katherine when Sahwah returned to the house.
“He’s surer than ever,” replied Sahwah. “He’s making the arrangements for his funeral. He’s sorry now that he didn’t join the Knights of Pythias when he had the chance so he could have had a band.”
“Is he really as sick as that?” asked Hinpoha in a scared voice.
“Sherry says he isn’t,” said Sahwah, “but Hercules insists that he won’t live till morning. Sherry’s getting sort of anxious about him himself, Justice told me outside the barn. Sherry said that Hercules believed so firmly in signs he’d just naturally worry himself to death before long, if he didn’t stop thinking about the ‘token’ he’d had. People do that sometimes. Hercules’ heart is bad and believing that his end was near might bring on a fatal spell.”
“Can’t we do something to make him stop thinking about it?” asked Migwan. “Remember the Dark of the Moon Society, Sahwah, that you got up to bring Katherine out of a fit of the blues that time up on Ellen’s Isle?”
“We can’t do anything like that now, though,” said Sahwah. “The foolish things we do wouldn’t have any effect upon him at all.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Migwan with a sigh, after various things had been suggested and immediately abandoned. “But I wish we could do something to rouse him from the dumps he’s fallen into,” she added with a sigh. “It seems as though we Winnebagos ought to be equal to the emergency.”