“Why did you say, ‘Thank God’?” she cried, fiercely. “Do you think I can save him? Mr. Dale, he is sick—he is very sick—he has pined and pined—for a sight of you, and Jingles and Buttons. What do you think he said just now?—raving as he is. ‘Will I go back soon, Bell Brandon? No, thank you, I can’t eat—I guess I want Mr. David, and Jingles and Buttons, and my own little cedar room.’ If he dies—David Dale—if he dies!—”
“Please—please, Wanza—”
She looked into my face, her eyes were black with emotion.
“Saddle Buttons and go at once for a doctor! I’ll put Joey in a cold pack while you’re gone; he’s burning with fever.”
“Practical, capable, ever ready to serve; lavish of her affection, staunch in her friendship, ‘steel true,—blade straight,’—that is Wanza,” I said to myself as I rode away.
The outcome of the doctor’s visit was that I sent for Mrs. Olds. Wanza and I got through the night somehow, and the next day Mrs. Olds came. I think this strange being entertained some slight tenderness for Joey, for when she saw him lying among his pillows with heavy-lidded eyes and fever-seared cheeks, she stooped and touched his brow very gently with her lips. Joey recognized her when she entered the room late at night in her heelless slippers and flannel dressing-gown, and set her small clock on the shelf above the bed. “Mrs. Olds,” he ordered distinctly, “take that clock out to the kitchen.”
Taken by surprise, Mrs. Olds protested: “There, there, Joey, don’t bother with me—that’s a good boy. Just close your eyes and go to sleep again.”
“I don’t watch the clock! Mr. David says the Now is the thing. Take it out! When the birds sing I’ll get up.”
But the birds sang and Joey did not awaken. He slept heavily all that day. And when he aroused toward midnight he did not know me. The following day he was worse, and that night I despaired. In his delirium he said things that well nigh crazed me. His mutterings were all of me, with an occasional reference to the collie and Buttons. “I don’t like to leave Mr. David alone, so long,” he kept repeating. “I ’most know he wants me back again—I been his boy so long.”
Presently when he sobbed out shrilly: “I just got to go back to Mr. David!” I arose precipitately, quitted the room and went out to the bench in the Dingle.