Well, we didn’t see Emmie before dinner. Will said somebody or other had slammed a door and she had gone into a collapse. He’d sent for the doctor again. As there was no servant, we pitched in and cooked what was in the house, which wasn’t much, except for the broiled squab, baked potato, two rolls, some green peas and a saucer of ice cream which the nurse took up to Emmie.
“If she would only eat!” Will said. “And build up her strength. But she just groans and turns her face away.”
It turned out that the nurse ate while Emmie was merely toying with her tray upstairs and feeding Teddy from it. But that night Teddy did not go upstairs. He had been fed and was asleep under the table. And it wasn’t more than five minutes after the nurse and the rest of us had sat down to our frugal repast when we heard Emmie feebly calling for him.
“You see?” Will said, hopelessly. “She won’t touch it, and she’s calling Teddy.”
“And Teddy isn’t going!” said Tish. “He’s under the table at my feet.”
Well, all through the meal we could hear Emmie weakly calling the dog, and Will and the nurse kept running up to see if she was all right. Once Will came down and tried to carry the dog up, but he ran out into the kitchen and into the yard, and he couldn’t catch him.
“Emmie’s frightfully upset,” he said in a worried way. “She has fancies like this, and I don’t like to cross her. But that dog has crawled under the porch and I don’t know what to do.”
Tish said nothing. Later on the tray came down untouched, and Will said Emmie was in a very bad way. She would not speak to him, and just lay there staring at the ceiling.
“She looks as though she is staring into eternity,” he said. “To think of me sitting here eating like an animal, and my poor wife——”
He was so overcome he had to leave the room, and Aggie got out her handkerchief.