"Dora! Dora!" called some one from above. It was her aunt; there was no help for it; she must show herself. In fear and trembling, she mounted the stairs and stood before her aunt, hiding the bandaged arm behind her. Her pretty Sunday dress was stained with blood, and her face too; for in her eagerness to wash it off she had spread it everywhere.
"Merciful Heaven!" cried her aunt, "what is the matter? Speak, child, did you fall down? How you look! You are as pale as death, and all smeared with blood! Dora, for heaven's sake, do speak!"
Dora had been trying to speak, but she could not get in a word edgewise. At last she said timidly,
"It was an arrow!"
A flood of lamentations followed. Aunt Ninette flew up and down the room wringing her hands and crying, "An arrow! an arrow! You have been shot! Shot in the arm! You will have a stiff arm all your life! You will be a cripple! You can never sew any more, nor do anything else! You will come to want! We shall all have to suffer for it! How unlucky we are! How are we to live, how can we ever get along, if your arm is lame?"
"Oh, Aunty dear, perhaps it will not be as bad as all that;" said the child sobbing, "did not papa tell us to remember:
"God holds us in his hand
God knows the best to send."
"Certainly, of course that's true; but if you are lame, you will be lame;" said Mrs. Ehrenreich, whimpering, "it makes me perfectly desperate. But go—no—come here to the water. Where is Mrs. Kurd? Somebody must go for the doctor."
Dora went to the wash-basin, while her aunt ran for Mrs. Kurd, and begged her to send for the doctor to come immediately; it was a case of shooting, and no one could tell how dangerous it might prove.
The doctor came as quickly as possible. He examined the wound, stopped the bleeding, bound it up without a word, in spite of Aunt Ninette's pertinacious attempts to make him express an opinion. He then took his hat and made for the door.