“Yes, go for Dr. Pulsifer,” said Aunt Charlotte, when he asked her about it; “and be as quick as you can.”
Flaxie knew nothing of all this. Her cheeks burned, her eyes shone, and she kept saying there were a million lions and tigers in the bed; and where was the rat-trap?
“Do bring the rat-trap!” said she, plunging about in a fright. “Oh, you don’t hear, do you? There’s a woman out in the other room eating peas,—eating, and eating, and eating. Why don’t you stop her? Oh, you don’t hear! Johnny Allen, run for a sponge and vinegar, and put it in auntie’s ears, so she can hear!”
Milly laughed at these strange speeches till she heard Nancy say to Mrs. Hunter, “Crazy as a loon, ain’t she? I’m afraid it’s water on the brain.”
Then Milly, who did not understand Nancy’s meaning, but was appalled by the tone, ran into the pantry, and cried behind the flour-barrel.
“If Flaxie Frizzle dies, I want to die too! She’s the only twin cousin I’ve got in the world.”
In a short time, considering how far he had ridden, Uncle Ben came home, but without Dr. Pulsifer, who had gone away, and could not be there before to-morrow noon.
“I’m so disappointed,” said Aunt Charlotte, looking pale and ill enough herself to be in bed. “But the poor little thing is asleep now, and perhaps she isn’t so very sick after all. Do tell me if you think there’s any danger of brain-fever?”
“Well, I think this,” replied Uncle Ben, leaning over the bed and taking a long look at the little patient; “I don’t know what ails her! It may be diphtheria, and then again it may be common sore throat; but if she isn’t better in the morning, we’ll telegraph to her father, for a child that can turn yellow and pea-green, as she did last spring, is capable of almost anything.”
“That is true,” said Aunt Charlotte; “one never knows what she is going to do next.” And then she looked at Flaxie, and sighed. It was wonderful what a power she had of keeping her friends in a worry, this little pink and white slip of a girl! Once she had fallen into a brook, and once into a well, beside falling sick times without number. Uncle Ben and Aunt Charlotte knew all this, but they did not happen to know that it was a very common thing for Flaxie to be crazy! It was just so with her brother Preston and her sister Ninny; they seldom had any little ailment like a bad cold without “going out of their heads,” and nobody in the family minded it at all.