“How’s the baby?” asked Uncle John.
“Dear me!” cried Patsy, with a distressed face; “and no doctor nearer than five miles!”
Both men leaped from their chairs.
“Why don’t they keep a doctor in the house?” roared the major.
“Suppose we send Dr. Lawson, right away!” suggested Uncle John.
Patsy, still holding up the letter, turned her eyes upon them reproachfully.
“It’s all over,” she said with a sigh.
The major dropped into a chair, limp and inert. Uncle John paled.
“The—the baby isn’t—dead!” he gasped.
“No, indeed,” returned Patsy, again reading. “But it had colic most dreadfully, and Louise was in despair. But the nurse, a dark-skinned Mexican creature, gave it a dose of some horrid hot stuff—”