Jud jumped up—“Good Lord, I thought you was a fool when you said you put that stone on her stomach, but now I know you done the right thing—you might have anchored her by a chain to the bed post, too, in case the rock didn't hold her down. Now look here,” he went on to Mrs. Carewe, “I'll go to the sto' an' send you a half pound of salts, a bottle of oil an' turbb'ntine. Give her plenty of it an' have her at the mill by to-morrow, or I'll cut off all your rations. As it is I don't see that you need them, anyway, to eat”—he sneered—“for you 'aint got no appetite at all.'”
From the Carewe cottage Jud went to a small yellow cottage on the farthest side of the valley. It was the home of John Corbin, and Willis, his ten-year-old son, was one of the main doffers. The father was lounging lazily on the little front verandah, smoking his pipe.
“What's the matter with Willis?” asked Jud after he had come up.
“Why, nothin'—” drawled the father. “Aint he at the mill?”
“No—the other four children of your'n is there, but Willis aint.”
The man arose with more than usual alacrity. “I'll see that he is there—” he declared—“it's as much as we can do to live on what they makes, an' I don't want no dockin' for any sickness if I can he'p it.”
Willis, a pale over-worked lad, was down with tonsillitis. Jud heard the father and mother in an angry dispute. She was trying to persuade him to let the boy stay at home. In the end hot words were used, and finally the father came out followed by the pale and hungry-eyed boy.
“He'd better die at the mill at work than here at home,” the father added brutally, as Jud led him off, “fur then the rest of us will have that much ahead to live on.”
He settled lazily back in his chair, and resumed his smoking.