"What ails you?"
It is Lockwin, looking in scorn on his doctor, who now, pale as a ghost, throws his hands up and down silly as the crone downstairs by the kitchen-range.
"Nothing can be done! Nothing can be done!"
"They say it hasn't been asthma at all," sobs Esther. "I suppose it's diphtheria."
"The man who can't tell when a child is sick, can't tell when he's dying," sneers Lockwin. "Doctor, when were you here yesterday?"
"I haven't been here since to-morrow week. My horses have been sick and the child was well."
Davy is white as marble. His breath comes hard. But why he should be dying, and why this fifty-cent doctor should know that much, puzzles and dumfounds the father. Davy may die next week, perhaps. Not dying now!
"It's a lie. It's not so," the father says.
"Mr. Lockwin, I don't want to say it, but it is so." It is the kind voice of Richard Tarbelle.
"Very well, then. It is diphtheria." It is the one goblin that for years has appalled Lockwin. Well it might, when it steals on a man like this. "To think I never gave him a drop of whisky. Oh! God! Get us a surgeon."