"Did you even it to her?" Maggie asked in a worried way.
"I did. I says, 'You're sick, Mrs. Richie,' I says.—She looked like she was dead—'Won't I tell George to run down and ask Dr. King to come up?' I says." "An' what did she say?" Maggie asked absently. She knew what Mrs. Richie had said, because this was the fourth time she and Sarah had gone over it.
"'No,' she says, 'I don't want the doctor. There's nothing the matter.' And she like death! An' I says, 'Will you see Mr. Pryor, ma'am, before he goes?' And she says, 'No,' she says; 'tell Mr. Pryor that I ain't feelin' very well.' An' I closed the shutters again, an' come down-stairs. But if it was me, I'd send for Dr. King. If she ain't well enough to see her own brother—and him just as kind!"—Sarah put her hand into the bosom of her dress for a dollar bill—"Look at that! And you had one, too, though he's hardly ever set eyes on you, If she ain't well enough to see him, she's pretty sick."
"Well," said Maggie, angrily, "I guess I earned my dollar as much as you. Where would his dinner be without me? That's always the way. The cook ain't seen, so she gets left out."
"You ain't got left out this time, anyhow. He's a kind man; I've always said so. And she said she wasn't well enough to see him! Well; if it was me's I'd send for Dr. King."
So the two women wrangled, each fearful of responsibility; until at last, after Maggie had twice gone up-stairs and listened at that silent door, they made up their minds.
"David," Maggie said, "you go and wait at the gate, and when the butcher's cart comes along, you tell him you want on. An' you go down street, an' tell him you want off at Dr. King's. An' you ask Dr. King to come right along up here. Tell him Mrs. Richie's real sick."
"If it was me, I'd let him wait till he goes to school," Sarah began to hesitate; "she'll be mad."
But Maggie had started in and meant to see the matter through: "Let her be mad!"
"Well, it's not my doin'," Sarah said with a fine carelessness, and crept up-stairs to listen again at Mrs. Richie's door. "Seemed like as if she was sort of—cryin'!" she told Maggie in an awed whisper when she came down.