“If you’ll keep yourself quiet,” answered the doctor, “that’s all I shall expect.”
“Oh, you needn’t fear about me. I know all about these things—why, my dear doctor, I’ve brought a good sight more living things into the world than you have, I bet.”
Edward, calm, self-possessed, unimaginative, was the ideal person for an emergency.
“There’s no good my knocking about the house all the afternoon,” he said. “I should only mope, and if I’m wanted I can always be sent for.”
He left word that he was going to Bewlie’s Farm to see a sick cow, about which he was very anxious.
“She’s the best milker I’ve ever had. I don’t know what I should do if anything went wrong with her. She gives her so-many pints a day, as regular as possible. She’s brought in over and over again the money I gave for her.”
He walked along with the free and easy step which Bertha so much admired, glancing now and then at the fields which bordered the highway. He stopped to examine the beans of a rival farmer.
“That soil’s no good,” he said, shaking his head. “It don’t pay to grow beans on a patch like that.”
When he arrived at Bewlie’s Farm, Edward called for the labourer in charge of the invalid.
“Well, how’s she going?”