Cooling off for a minute or two, we ran to the house, where Ma Doane met us mysteriously at the kitchen door.
“Sh-h-h-h!” she breathed, with a finger to her thin lips.
Poppy let out his neck toward the inner rooms.
“Is the doctor here?” he inquired eagerly, though in a careful voice.
“That’s what I want to talk to you about,” and the housekeeper quietly closed the doors leading into the adjoining rooms. Facing us, I saw now how big her eyes were. “I don’t want your friend to hear me,” she explained, meaning old Goliath, “for I find that he runs and tells everything in the sick room. And Pa isn’t to know about this until to-night, so the doctor said.”
“Know about what?” came quickly from Poppy.
“That all he’s got is the hives and indigestion. You see, Lawyer Chew is liable to bring the sheriff here any minute to put us out. And when Dr. Madden learned of the predicament I was in, he and I together worked out a scheme to temporarily keep the lawyer away.” The gray eyes sort of twinkled now. “The doctor isn’t quite ‘sure’ about Pa’s case. See? And to be safe—for it might be very contagious, you know!—he tacked up a quarantine sign on the front door. So now, if the sheriff comes, we have only to show him the sign and tell him to scoot.”
“Hot dog!” laughed Poppy, thinking of how old fatty would huff and puff in his defeat. “Where is the doctor, Mrs. Doane?—upstairs?”
“Oh, he’s gone.”
For an instant the leader looked blank.