——Robert Browning.
THE early days of March were bright and warm and full of the promise of spring. Mouse ears came out on the willows that bordered the river, and a bunch of them was proudly carried to Libby Anne by Jimmy Watson, who declared that he had heard a meadowlark. One evening, too, as she lay in her tent, Libby Anne had heard the honking of wild geese going north, and the bright March sun that came through the canvas each day cheered her wonderfully. Libby Anne always believed that Bud would come home in the spring—he would surely come to see the big brown tumbling flood go down the Souris valley. Nobody could stay away from home in the spring, when the hens are cackling in the sun-shiny yard, and water trickling down the furrows, and every day may be the day the first crocus comes. Bud would surely come then, and she would get all better, and she and her mother would go to Grandma's, and so Libby Anne beguiled her days and nights with pleasing fancies as she waited for the spring.
But although the snow had left the fields in black patches and the sun was bright and warm, the anemones delayed their coming and the ice remained solid and tight in the Souris.
One day, instead of the dazzling sunshine, there were lead-gray clouds, and a whistling wind came down the valley, piercing cold, carrying with it sharp little hurrying snowflakes.
Up to this time Libby Anne had made good progress, but with the change in the weather came a change in her. Almost without warning she developed pleurisy.
The doctor's face was white with pain when he told her mother the meaning of the flushed cheeks and laboured breathing. She had been doing so well, too, and seemed in a fair way to win against the relentless foe, but now, restlessly tossing on her pillow, with a deadly catch in her breathing, what chance had such a frail little spar of weathering the angry billows?
When the doctor went back to his office he saw Sandy Braden passing and called him in. He told him of the new danger that threatened Libby Anne.
"What can we do, Clay?" he cried, when the doctor had finished. "Is there anyone that can give her a better chance than you? How about that Scotch doctor, MacTavish? Isn't he pretty good? Can't we get him?"
"He's too busy, I'm afraid. I don't think he ever leaves the city," Dr. Clay replied. "He's the best I know, if we could only get him—though perhaps we will not need him. I'll watch the case, and if there is any chance of an operation being necessary we can wire him."
The next day Dr. Clay wired for the famous specialist, and in a few hours the answer came back that Dr. MacTavish could not leave the city. Dr. Clay had gone back to Libby Anne's bedside before the message came, and so it was to Sandy Braden that it was delivered.