"The cow is used to Lucy, Mr. Brock, and she might show fight to you."
Obedient to her father's wishes, Miss Lucy shrinkingly pushed the kettle under the dividing pole, and poured the water into it, while Mr. Brock, with prudent forethought, picked up a thick stick and took a position in the doorway.
Suddenly the animal, hearing the splash of water, turned and unexpectedly lunged at the kettle. The dividing pole cracked under her onslaught. Miss Lucy started back with a scream, and fell violently. Mr. Brock thrust strongly at the cow as she rushed forward again, and the creature reeled back on her haunches. Before she could recover herself for another plunge, he had lifted Miss Lucy over the sill, and together, Miss Nancy and Mrs. Doggett had slammed the door, and thrust its iron bar in place.
"Lord!" shuddered Mrs. Doggett, "that wuz a narrer call!"
"Open the gate for me," wheezed the breathless Mr. Brock, staggering along with his limp burden on whose forehead appeared a little blood, trickling from a slight cut. "We'd better git her to the house quick!"
Miss Lucy, laid on the sitting-room lounge, presently revived and feebly murmured her distress at causing so much of trouble.
"Don't you thenk we'd better go back and doctor on the cow, Mr. Brock—give her them bitters, er somethin'?"
The old man's mind, his anxiety for his daughter relieved, presently turned again to his barn-yard patient.
"I'm afraid she's about past medicine," Mr. Brock regretted, placidly seating himself. "If you wish it, though, I'll stay and take a look at her ever' once and a while, and if there's no change by three o'clock, and you wish it, I'll send home for my rifle to shoot the poor creature."
Mrs. Doggett bent reluctant eyes on the clock.