Jim quickened his pace.
“Where is the next house, and what doctor shall I send for?” he asked pleasantly.
“It’s just over the ridge there; the Colberts. They know Dr. Blair’s number. My husband would go himself but he can’t step on his hurt foot and I don’t dare leave. Tell the Colberts that it’s the baby! He’s dying, and I don’t know what to do!”
Jim turned, and hurried off over the ridge, but Lou took a step forward.
“Baby! I’ve been takin’ care of babies all my life, seems like. You let me look at it, ma’am.”
“Oh, do you think you could do anything, a little thing like you?”
The young woman eyed the forlornly drenched figure before her rather doubtfully, but something she read in Lou’s steady, confident gaze seemed to reassure her, and she threw wide the door. “Come in, please! He’s all blue.”
Lou unceremoniously pushed past her 120down the clean little hallway and paused for a moment upon the threshold of the room at its end. It was a kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny, rigid little form.
Lou went straight to him and unceremoniously possessed herself of the baby.
Its small face was waxen, with a bluish tinge about the mouth, and half-closed, glazing eyes.