“Sanders’s!” repeated Dorothy. “That’s where we’re going. Who’s sick?”
“The baby,” replied the doctor, “and they asked me to hurry.”
“Get in with us,” Ted invited, while Dorothy almost gasped. Little Emily sick! She could scarcely believe it.
Dr. Gray gladly accepted the invitation to ride, and the next cutter with Ned, Nat and Mabel, pulled up along side of Ted’s.
“You may as well turn back,” Dorothy told them. Then she explained that little Emily was sick, and likely would not want her Christmas tree trimmed.
“But I’ll go along,” she said, “I may be able to help, for her mother is sick, even if she is with her.”
After all her preparations, it was a great disappointment to think the child could not enjoy the gifts. Dr. Gray told her, however, that Emily was subject to croup, and that perhaps the spell would not last.
At the house they found everything in confusion. Emily’s sick mother coughed harder at every attempt she made to help the little one, while Mr. Sanders, the child’s grandfather, tried vainly to get water hot on a lukewarm stove.
“Pretty bad, Doc,” he said with a groan, “thought she’d choke to death last night.”
Without waiting to be directed, Dorothy threw aside her heavy coat, drew off her gloves, and was breaking bits of wood in her hands, to hurry the kettle that, being watched, had absolutely refused to boil.