"Don't—tell—your—maw," he said, putting out his hand feebly.
The words seemed to recall her. She went hurriedly into the house and close to the lounge where her mother was lying.
"Maw," she said quickly, "you must get up! Pappy's got a hem'ridge. I want you to help me to get 'im to bed, an' then I'm goin' fer a doctor."
The woman got up, and followed her daughter eagerly.
"Why, Eben!" she said, when they reached the kitchen door. Her voice was almost womanly; and a real anxiety seemed to have penetrated her hysterical egoism.
They got him to bed tenderly, and propped him up among the white pillows. His knotted hands lay on the coverlet, gray and bloodless under the stains of hard work. Idy bent over him, tucking him in with little pats and crooning moans of sympathy. When she had finished, she dropped her wet cheek against his beard.
"I'm goin' fer the doctor, pappy," she whispered; "I won't be gone but a little while,"—then rushed down the path to the stable, and flung the harness on the pinto.
The buggy was standing in the shed, and she caught the shafts and dragged it out with superabundant energy, as if her anxiety found relief in the exertion. A few minutes later she drove out between the rows of pallid young eucalyptus-trees that led to the road, leaning eagerly forward, her young face white and set beneath the row of knobby protuberances that represented the morning stage of her much cherished bang. It was thus that she drove into Elsmore, the rattling of the old buggy and the spots of lather on the pinto's sides exciting a ripple of curiosity, which furnished its own solution in the fact that it was "that there Starkweather girl," who was generally conceded to be "a great one."
She stopped her panting horse before the doctor's office, and sprang out.
"Are you the doctor?" she asked breathlessly, standing on the threshold, with one hand on each side of the casing.