V
So blank, so idle, had been the week that when he heard the telephone at the Tozers’, at three in the morning, he rushed to it as though he were awaiting a love message.
A hoarse and shaky voice: “I want to speak to the doctor.”
“Yuh—yuh— ’S the doctor speaking.”
“This is Henry Novak, four miles northeast, on the Leopolis road. My little girl, Mary, she has a terrible sore throat. I think maybe it is croup and she look awful and— Could you come right away?”
“You bet. Be right there.”
Four miles—he would do it in eight minutes.
He dressed swiftly, dragging his worn brown tie together, while Leora beamed over the first night call. He furiously cranked the Ford, banged and clattered past the station and into the wheat prairie. When he had gone six miles by the speedometer, slackening at each rural box to look for the owner’s name, he realized that he was lost. He ran into a farm driveway and stopped under the willows, his headlight on a heap of dented milk-cans, broken harvester wheels, cordwood, and bamboo fishing-poles. From the barn dashed a woolly anomalous dog, barking viciously, leaping up at the car.
A frowsy head protruded from a ground-floor window. “What you want?” screamed a Scandinavian voice.
“This is The Doctor. Where does Henry Novak live?”