“I know I am.” As she spoke she held her family close to her, Doris and Tommy kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She leaned back and smiled at them.
“That’s better,” Becky said. “Now you children let her go up to her room. I have to tend my broth and see how Tom’s coming along. Looks to me like rest and quiet will carry him through if anything will.”
“Becky!” There was a note of panic in their Mother’s voice. Nobody but the same unemotional Becky knew how she longed to put her head right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry. “Becky, the doctors at the hospital say he’ll never be any better.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” exclaimed Becky indignantly, with a toss of her head. “Lots they know about it. I never take any stock in those doctors at all, Margie. Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for emergencies, and I’ll undertake to help anybody hang on to themselves a little bit longer. They can keep their penicillin and sulfa powder and other fancy drugs.”
“But things seem so near a crisis now.”
“Let them.” Rebecca stood with her hands on her hips, as if she were hurling defiance at somebody, and the family fairly hung on her words. “Buck up, Margie Craig. As for you, Jean and Kit and Doris and Tommy, if I find any of you looking doleful, I declare I’ll stick clothespins on your noses and fasten a smile to your lips with adhesive tape.”
Even without this advice the children were determined to look cheerful and to keep their father carefree and happy.
3. Becky Steps In
Saturday came and went without the party. Once, and sometimes twice a day the doctor’s car turned into the broad pebbled driveway and the children went around with subdued voices and anxious faces. Even Lydia, down in her kitchen domain, looked foreboding, and told Rebecca that she had dreamed three times of three blackbirds perching on the chimneys, which was a sure sign of death, anyone could tell you, in her own country.
“Maybe it is, and maybe it isn’t,” Becky laughed back. “If I were you, Lydia, I’d take something for my liver and go to bed a little earlier at night.”