When men heard the commotion and turned to look they saw Seth's horses tearing madly round the hotel corner. Little Billy Evans was rattling around in the wagon box like a cork on the water and Fanny Foster, swaying like a reed, was hanging desperately to the horses' heads.
Hank Lolly was pitching hay into the barn loft. He saw, jumped and then lay still with a broken leg. Seth saw and Billy Evans and scores of other men, and they all ran madly to help. But the terrified animals waited for no man. And then from the throats of the running crowd a groan broke, for the school doors opened and into the spring sunshine and the arms of certain death the little first and second graders came dancing.
The school building hid the danger from the children and they did not comprehend the hoarse shouts of warning. But Fanny heard, heard the childish laughter and the screams of horror. She knew those horses must not turn that corner. Her feet swung against the shafts. Her heel caught for a minute and she jerked with all her might. The mad creatures swerved and dashed themselves and her against a telegraph pole.
When they picked up little Billy and Fanny they were both unconscious. One of Billy's little arms was broken, so violently had he been flung about and against the iron bars of the scat. Fanny's injuries were more serious.
They took her home to her spotless house with the children's dinner set out on the red tablecloth in the kitchen. The pussy willows the children had brought her the day before were in a vase in the center. Her husband came home and spoke to her but she neither saw him nor heard. They gave him a blood-stained bank book with his name on it.
And so she lay for days and sometimes Doc Philipps thought she would live and at other times he was sure she couldn't; but if she lived he knew that she would never again flit like vagrant sunshine through Green Valley streets. She would spend the rest of her days in a wheel chair or on crutches.
When they got courage finally to tell her, Fanny only smiled and said nothing. But she ate less and smiled more and steadily grew weaker and weaker and as steadily refused to see her husband.
"No," she said quietly, "there's nothing I want to see John about and there's nothing for him to see me about any more. I guess," she smiled at the gruff old doctor, "you're about the only man I can stand the sight of or who would put up with me."
"Fanny," Doc Philipps told her, "if you don't buck up and get well, if you die on my hands, it will be the first mean thing you ever did."
"Oh, well—it would be the last," laughed Fanny.