Next morning we sat her on the platform to wait for the doctor, who had now been gone three days. “He does better in the air,” said she. “He—he-needs air!” It was melancholy weather—thick fog, with a drizzle of rain: the wind in the east, fretful and cold. All morning long she rocked the child in her arms: now softly singing to him—now vainly seeking to win a smile—now staring vacantly into the mist, dreaming dull dreams, while he lay in her lap.
“He isn’t come through the tickle, have he?” she asked, when I came up from the shop at noon.
“He’ve not been sighted yet.”
“I’m thinkin’ he’ll be comin’ soon.”
“Ay; you’ll not have t’ wait much longer.”
“I’m not mindin’ that,” said she, “for I’m used t’ waitin’.”
The doctor came in from the sea at evening—when the wind had freshened to a gale, blowing bitter cold. He had been for three days and nights fighting without sleep for the life of that mother of seven—and had won! Ay, she had pulled through; she was now resting in the practiced care of the Cuddy Cove women, whose knowledge of such things had been generously increased. The ragged, sturdy seven still had a mother to love and counsel them. The Cuddy Cove men spoke reverently of the deed and the man who had done it. Tired? The doctor laughed. Not he! Why, he had been asleep under a tarpaulin all the way from Cuddy Cove! And Skipper Elisha Timbertight had handled the skiff in the high seas so cleverly, so tenderly, so watchfully—what a marvellous hand it was!—that the man under the tarpaulin had not been awakened until the nose of the boat touched the wharf piles. But the doctor was hollow-eyed and hoarse, staggering of weariness, but cheerfully smiling, as he went up the path to talk with the woman from Bowsprit Head.
“You are waiting for me?” he asked.
She was frightened—by his accent, his soft voice, his gentle manner, to which the women of our coast are not used. But she managed to stammer that her baby was sick.
“’Tis his throat,” she added.