Well, in the mornin’ she wuz bed-sick—too sick to git up—and I can’t say but what I did have a few reflections, mebby two or three, thinkin’ of the night air and the corks I’d refused and the quantities of air I’d let in. But yet I wuz held up a good deal by duty and the thought that her weak feelin’s wuz probable caused by reasons I’ve named and her journey in waist screws and heel tortures, and then her sentimental feelin’s for Le Flam I spozed helped it on some; but anyway and ’tennyrate, she looked like death when I carried up her coffee and toast to her—not strong coffee, but jest right, fresh, and fragrant and plenty of cream, and the toast was delicate, brown, and crispy, and I took up a fresh egg and a little china dish of strawberries. But she couldn’t eat a mou’ful. And I wuz most skairt, she looked so white and tired, and I sez to Josiah when I went downstairs:
“You’ll have to go to Jonesville and git the doctor.” For I, not knowin’ how much wuz sentiment and how much sickness, thought I’d better be on the safe side and git a doctor, and owin’ to a feelin’ that I couldn’t quite explain myself, it come to me so sort of queer and sudden, “Git young Dr. Phillip,” sez I. You see, Dr. Phillip Rhodes, father and son, wuz doctors, and folks called ’em old Dr. Phillip and young Dr. Phillip.
And Josiah sez, “You always have the old doctor, Samantha.”
And I sez, “That don’t make any difference, Josiah; you get young Dr. Phillip.”
And I thought on’t after he went, I didn’t really know why I did insist on havin’ him; I don’t really think that I’d planned out anything in my own mind at that time, but I wuz kinder led to do what I did.
CHAPTER VI
Young Dr. Phillip Rhodes wuz a prime favorite of mine, and had always been. He had as much goodness and common sense and smartness about him as any young man I ever set eyes on. He wuz good lookin’, too, with keen, dark eyes, kinder laughin’ and kinder sad eyes, too, as if he see naterally on both sides of life—the bright side and pathetic side. Tall, broad shouldered, manly lookin’, he wuz, as nigh as I could make out from what I’d hearn, as near the opposite of Dora’s bo as you could find.
Well, young Dr. Phillip took her little slender white wrist in his hand and counted her heart beats by his watch, and mebby he counted ’em by his own heart, too, for Dora did look sweet as a picter as she lay there with her golden hair all kinder curly round her pale face and her big violet-blue eyes, and the waves of white lace about her neck comin’ up round her soft cheeks that wuz jest about as white.