"No, madame!" and Father put his finger again on her wrist. Miss Elizabeth wept silently and Miss Margaret sobbed aloud.
"Tell me, has Ellen Miller"s baby come?"
"Yes, I have just come from there. It is a fine boy and mother and baby doing well."
"Good! I am glad when I hear some men are being born into the county.
Too many women! Too many women! What are you girls crying for?" she asked, turning her head a little on the pillow and looking with wonder at the two old ladies she called girls. "There is no use in crying for me. I am glad to die,--not that I have not been happy in my life,--yes, very happy! But there are more on the other side than this side now for me. Your father and brothers, my father and mother and brothers and sisters, all my friends. Do you think I"ll know them, James?"
"Yes, madame, I think you will."
"I don"t expect them to know me," the faint old voice went on. "How could they know me, so old and wrinkled and feeble? My husband was only fifty-five when he died and I was still nothing more than a child of fifty. My hair had not turned and I was very lively. Do you think he will be disappointed to find me so old?"
Her mind was wandering now and her voice trailed off to the finest thread. Father motioned me to go, but before I could turn the old lady suddenly sat up in bed and called to her daughters:
"Don"t forget to have the giant-of-battle rose trimmed back and those hollyhocks transplanted!" Then she fell back on her pillow and closed her eyes.
I slipped out of the room and ran into the garden where Father found me a half hour later.
"How is Mrs. Reed, Father?" I asked. He looked at me wonderingly.
"She is well again," he answered gently. "She was dead, my dear, before you left the room."
"Oh, Father!" I gasped.
"I was sorry for you to be there, but I got fooled. I thought the old lady was going to live a few hours longer, but doctors know mighty little when you come down to life and death. Come, honey! We must go. I have a sick child to see on my way home."
We had to stop at a little country store on the way to see the sick child to get some chewing-gum for the youthful patient. Father always had chewing-gum for the sick kiddies and that kept him in high favor with them. Doc Allison was looked upon as a kind of concrete Santy who gave un-Christmas presents. He carried peppermints always in his pocket, and when a child was told to poke out his tongue he more than likely would find a peppermint on it before he pulled it in again.
The child was better and our stay did not have to be very lengthy. All the children in the family had insisted upon showing their tongues to the giver of peppermints, which delayed us a few moments.
"And now for home!" said Father, who was looking tired. He actually handed the reins to me to drive while he filled his pipe for a peaceful smoke.
We were pa.s.sing through a settlement where there was the usual post-office, country store, church and schoolhouse, with a few houses straggling around, when a young man ran out into the road and called desperately to Father to stop. I drew rein and he came panting to the buggy.
"Doc Allison, please come be witness for us!"
"Witness? What for?"
"Well, Julia and I have walked off to get married. I won"t say "run off"
because both of us are of age and have been of age for a good five years. But Julia"s mother is that cantankerous that she won"t let her get married if she knows about it, and so we have come to the parson"s with license and all; but he says we must have witnesses and there"s no one in the settlement right now but the postmaster and the storekeeper and they can"t leave their jobs, and besides they are afraid of the old lady. She is on her way here now, I believe, so you"ll have to hurry."
We found the bride in the parson"s parlor looking nervously out of the window. She, too, was afraid of the old lady. I was sorry for the parson because he must have been afraid, too, but he went manfully through the ceremony. He had hardly finished with: "Whom G.o.d hath united let no man put asunder," when there was a terrible commotion in the road. An old lady came driving up in a spring wagon. She had blood in her eye, a terribly rampagious old lady. She stepped out of the wagon and I noticed she had on top boots. She wore a short, scant skirt and a workman"s blue chambray shirt and a man"s hat pulled down over as determined a countenance as I have ever seen.
"Mrs. Henderson!" gasped the preacher, turning pale, and well he might as Mrs. Henderson was someone to stand in awe of.
"Come on home here, girl!" she said roughly, as she made her way into the parson"s parlor.
"Her home is where I live now," said the young man, putting his arm around the bride.
"Nonsense! I never got too late to anything in my life. I telephoned these folks over here that they had better not stand as witness to any ceremony until I got here, and I know they wouldn"t do it." She had been too enraged to notice Father and me, but now when Father stepped up and spoke to her, she fell back in confusion.
"My daughter and I were fortunately in time to witness the ceremony," he said quietly. "It is all over now and your daughter is safely married."
"Married!"
"Yes, Mrs. Henderson, and I advise you to sit still a moment and compose yourself. You will have apoplexy some of these days flying off in these rages." He looked at her very sternly. "Your daughter has married a good young fellow and she will be much happier than she would be remaining single."
"What business is it of yours, I"d like to know?"
"No business at all, except that I was asked to witness the ceremony by your son-in-law; and if you should get sick from the excitement you are working yourself into, you will send for me post haste," answered Father coolly.
"Never! Not after the bad turn you have done me!"
"Well, that"s as you choose," he laughed.
Then he kissed the bride, who had said never a word but clung to her husband; shook hands with the groom and the parson; held out his hand to the irate, booted old woman. She would have none of him, however, but folded her arms and sniffed indignantly. She made me think of:
"But Douglas "round him drew his cloak, Folded his arms and thus he spoke:"
One couldn"t help laughing at her but feeling sorry for her, too.
"She"ll have to pay for this," said Father, as we started again for home. "She has been going into rages like this all her life and usually has a spell of sickness after one like to-day"s."
"But, Father, you surely would not go to her after the way she spoke to you!"
"Of course I would if she needs me. Country doctors can"t be too touchy.
It isn"t as though she could get someone else as she could in town. In cities a doctor isn"t so important as he is in the country. There are always plenty more to answer a call that he turns down. I have never in my life refused a patient."
We had a quiet drive home, Father smoking his pipe, while I gave undivided attention to the prancings and shyings of the colt. I was thinking of all the happenings of the day.
"A penny for your thoughts!" he said, pinching my ear. "I bet I know what you are ruminating."
"Well!"
"You have come to the conclusion that a good deal can happen in a country neighborhood in a day: a birth, a death, a marriage and a quarrel."
CHAPTER XVIII
THE END OF AN EVENTFUL DAY
THINGS kept on happening. When I got out of the buggy to open the big gate leading into the avenue, a gate that was supposed to work by pulling a string but which never did, I saw some peculiar tracks in the dust of the road.
"An automobile has gone in," I exclaimed, "and hasn"t gone out, either!
Look, the tracks don"t come back!"