“What is it?” breathed Barbara.
“Where’s father?” asked Jack.
“Gone to see the Wemott baby. What’s the matter with David?”
“I wish I knew,” said Jack, hoarsely. “He’s sick, though. Call father by ’phone, and then help me to get him to bed. I’ll tell you about it when you come upstairs.”
Barbara’s heart stood still, but her feet flew. “Wemott’s residence,” she said at the telephone. “Oh, I don’t know the number, Central; hurry, please, do hurry!”
It seemed hours before the answer came. “Is Dr. Grafton still there? . . . No, don’t call him. . . . Tell him to come home at once.” Even in her excitement she found thought to add the words that should save him ten minutes of worry,—“There has been a hurry call.”
The limp little body lay stretched out on David’s bed. “I can’t find his night-shirt,” said Jack, in the same hoarse voice. “Where do you keep it, Barbara? He was taken sick at school. Bob Needham came running over to the High School to tell me to come at once,—that David was acting strangely. By the time I got there, he was lying just like this across one of the recitation benches, and his teacher was trying to make him swallow a little brandy. She told me that she had noticed that he was not himself during a recitation; he began to talk loudly and rather wildly, and to insist that his head did ache; that”—Jack seemed to force out the words—“that it wasn’t the nine o’clock disease. She tried to quiet him, and had just succeeded in getting him to agree to go home, when he toppled over on the floor. Don’t wait to unfasten that shoe-string, Barbara; cut it. Of course I brought him right home. Willowby’s driver was just passing the school, and I hailed him. When will father be here?”
Between the disjointed sentences brother and sister put the sick child to bed. Then Jack hurried to call Dr. Curtis by telephone, while Barbara hovered over the still form until her father’s step was heard on the stair. In the ten minutes’ interval the girl learned what four years of college had failed to teach,—the hardest lesson that Time brings to Youth,—how to wait.
The two physicians arrived almost simultaneously. Then Barbara and Jack were sent downstairs on errands that both felt were manufactured for the occasion. When they came back, the bedroom door was shut and they sat down in the hall outside, silent and aloof, and yet drawn together by the same fear which struggled at each heart. After what seemed to be hours, the door opened, and Dr. Curtis came out. Two white faces questioned his.
“Probably brain fever,” said the doctor. “We hope that it won’t be very serious,—if we’ve caught it in time. Jack, you come along to the drug-store with me. Miss Barbara, you might go in and see your father now.”