“Oh, Cousin Tab, we were just asking him to go, and he says he saw Doctor Binks lying in the fence corner three miles away, so drunk that no one could induce him to stand on his feet a minute, and they had to leave him there till morning. So what shall we do, with the nearest doctor fifteen miles away, only for old Doctor Ludington?”
She said this in a tone of despair, for all knew that even if the hot-headed old ex-Confederate could be coaxed to the bedside of the Union soldier, Gran’ther Groves himself would have preferred death rather than a life saved by his enemy.
So it was settled that no physician could be gotten for the old man, and they must do their best for him, an undertaking that gave very poor results, so that Miss Tabitha was presently wringing her hands and lamenting:
“Nothing we do don’t help him at all! See how purple his face is getting, how his limbs twitch an’ draw up, poor soul, an’ how awful hard he breathes, like as if he was dying! ’Clar’ to goodness if I’d ’spected this was going to happen, I’d never a druv little Eva off so soon! She allays could doctor him better nor any of us!”
“’Cause she took more intrust in him, that’s why!” remarked Dan bluntly, adding with a certain wistfulness: “Lemme run after her, Miss Tab, and bring her back! She cain’t be gone very fur; the smoke will git in her eyes, so’s she cain’t find her way!”
But at that moment the whistle of the east-bound express train sounded loud and clear, and Lydia cried, with smothered triumph:
“It’s too late, she’s gone! There’s the train, now. Eva’s off to her rich father in New York, and we have seen the last of her, thank goodness!”
“And I’m sorry for’t! She was the nicest one of you all!” Dan exclaimed, drawing his rough sleeve across his eyes.
The girls started to giggle at his self-betrayal, but they remembered just in time that this was a house of illness and death, and Patty said sharply:
“Hurry to the kitchen, Dan, and heat some water, quick, to bathe gran’ther’s feet. It’s the way Eva always did in his worst spells.”