“What is it, Doctor?” inquired Abner Pickett, anxiously.
The doctor sat down by the table and unlocked his medicine chest before replying. He was always deliberate with his answers.
“I’m afraid it’s pneumonia,” he said finally. “One lung seems to be pretty badly involved. I guess we’ll pull him through, though.”
He weighed out the medicine and divided the powder into separate doses.
“Give him one every three hours.” Then he added, “Martha’s been telling me what he did Tuesday. What under the canopy possessed him to paddle through that storm to Mooreville, I can’t see. Why, he might have died of exhaustion. As it is he—well, we’ll do what we can for him.”
He turned his attention then to the compounding of a liquid prescription.
“Give him a teaspoonful every hour,” he directed, “till you get his pulse down to something reasonable—say a hundred and twenty. How’s the lawsuit going to come out, Abner?”
“I don’t know, an’ I don’t much care if you’ll only pull this boy through.”
“Just so. Do the best we can, of course. Nice boy; hate to lose him. I don’t think you’ll have any particular trouble to-night, though, and I’ll come up in the morning again and see how he is.”