“Apparently I’m going to spoil the party; and I can’t get back home. Find me a place to stay over night, Dick—the cleanest house there is. And telephone Dr. Wilson. In the meantime get hold of the doctor here.”
They did as she said. The little frame house of the mine superintendent was made ready and the superintendent’s wife, a Swedish woman of forty, after her first bewilderment took command of the situation and Cecily with stolid sympathy. Cecily, in a strange hummocky bed, wearing a coarse cotton flannel nightgown, soon lost the connection between reality and nightmares. Nothing was real about her—the face of the Swede woman with her guttural reassurances, the bearded man who they said was the doctor, but who seemed unable to relieve her torture—but through it all her mind pounded along on a steady track of fear and determination. She might lose her baby—she would not lose her baby—they must take care. She kept giving directions, pathetic directions, about that.
Matthew had found the doctor and after a look at Cecily he told them that they would have no time to send for their own physician. He did not seem much concerned about it all and was inclined to take it all very easily. He was a middle-aged man—Swedish also—with a blond beard and abstracted blue eyes.
“But,” said Dick, “there’s not even a nurse!”
The doctor smiled. “Fifty babies in six months in this village,” he said, “and no nurse for any of them. This lady (pointing to Fliss) and Mrs. Olson will help me—and you, if I need you.”
But it seemed none the less terrible. Matthew and Dick pooled their knowledge of such events. Fliss stayed by Cecily, remarkably calm, helping Mrs. Olson in her meager preparations, but white to her lips. And each half hour the cloud of pain and worry thickened over the little house. It was a cold night. Mrs. Olson had sent her children to a neighbor’s house. Dick and Matthew, in the kitchen, tried to conceal their fears.
“Why was I such a damned fool as to bring her?” cried Dick.
“I wish I hadn’t suggested it, but we did and we’re here. We’ll have to see it through, Dick. The chances are ninety to one that it will come out all right, old man.” But he, too, was white and his hand shook a little as he poked at the fire in the stove.
Fliss came in and stood leaning against the door. They jumped up. She gave them a few directions.
“Hunt through the drug store yourself,” she finished. “We must be sure the things are right. I’ll watch.”