"No matter if I _do_ catch the epizootic; guess I"ll get over it," said the boy.
They finally came to the Smith house. Helen and Mrs. Sadoc Smith came out on the porch when the dog barked. Ruth made Ann and Curly go ahead and held back with the sick girl.
"You go right upstairs with Helen, Ann," commanded Ruth. "I want to talk to Mrs. Smith about Amy. She must be put in a warm room downstairs."
Mrs. Sadoc Smith agreed to this proposal the instant she saw Amy"s flushed face and heard her muttering.
"You telephone for Doctor Lambert, Henry," commanded Mrs. Smith. "We"ll have him give a look at her--though I could dose her myself, I reckon, and bring her out all right."
Ruth feared the worst. She secretly stuck to her first diagnosis that Amy had scarlet fever, but she did not say this to Mrs. Smith. They put Amy to bed between blankets, and Mrs. Smith succeeded in getting the girl to drink a dose of hot tea.
"That"ll start her perspiring, which won"t do a bit of harm," she said to Ruth. "But I never saw anybody"s face so red before--and her hands and arms, too. She"s breaking all out, I do declare."
Ruth was thinking: "If they have to quarantine Amy, I"ll be quarantined with her. I"ll have to nurse her instead of going to school. Poor little thing! she will require somebody"s constant attention.
"But, oh dear!" added the girl of the Red Mill, "what will become of my school work? I"ll never be able to graduate in the world. Lucky those moving pictures are taken--I won"t be needed any more in those. Oh, dear!"
Ruth did not allow a murmur to escape her lips, however. She insisted on remaining by the patient all night, too. Mrs. Smith was not able to quiet the sick girl as well as Ruth did when the delirium Amy developed became wilder.
It was almost daylight before Dr. Lambert came. He had been out of town on a case, but came at once when he returned to Lumberton and found the call from Mrs. Sadoc Smith"s.
"What is it, Doctor?" asked the old lady. "She"s as red as a lobster. Is it anything catching? This girl ought not to be here, if it is."
"This girl had better remain here till we find out just what is the matter," the doctor returned, scowling in a puzzled way at the patient. He had seen at once that Ruth could control Amy.
"But what is it?"
"Fever. Delirium. You can see for yourself. What its name is, I"ll tell you when I come again. Keep on just as you are doing, and give her this soothing medicine, and plenty of cracked ice--on her tongue, at least.
That is what is the matter; she is consumed with thirst. I"ll have to see that eruption again before I can say for sure what the matter is."
He went, and left the house in a turmoil of excitement. Helen and Ann did not wish to go to Briarwood and leave Ruth; but Mrs. Tellingham commanded them to. Much to his delight, Curly was kept out of his school to run errands.
Ruth got a nap on the lounge in the sitting room, and felt better. The doctor returned at nine o"clock in the forenoon and by that time the sick girl"s face was so swollen that she could scarcely see out of her eyes.
Her hands and wrists were puffed badly, too.
"Where has she been?" demanded Dr. Lambert.
Ruth told him what they supposed had happened to Amy the day before and where she had been found late at night.
"Humph!" grunted the medical pract.i.tioner. "That"s what I thought. Effect of the _Rhus Toxicodendron_. Bad case."
This sounded very terrible to Ruth until she suddenly remembered something she had read in her botany. A great feeling of relief came over her.
"Oh! poison-ash!" she cried.
"Good land! Nothin" but poison ivy?" demanded Mrs. Sadoc Smith.
"Poison oak, or poison sumac--whatever you have a mind to call it. But a bad case of it, I a.s.sure you. I"ll leave more of the cooling draught; and I"ll send up a salve to put on her face and hands. Don"t let it get into the poor child"s eyes--and don"t let her tear off the mask which she will have to wear."
"Then there is no danger of scarlet fever," whispered Ruth, feeling relieved.
CHAPTER XXIII
PUTTING ONE"S BEST FOOT FORWARD
Amy Gregg"s escapade created a lot of excitement at Briarwood Hall.
Inasmuch as it affected Ruth, the whole school was in a flutter about it.
Helen and Ann had come to the Hall, late for breakfast, and spread the news in the dining hall. They were both sure, by Ruth"s actions and the doctor"s first noncommittal report, that Amy had some contagious disease.
Curly had made a deal of the sore throat Amy had confessed to.
"And if that"s so," Helen said, almost in tears, "poor Ruth will be quarantined for weeks."
"Why, Helen, how will she graduate?" gasped Lluella.
"She won"t! She can"t!" declared Ruth"s chum. "It will be dreadful!"
"I say!" cried Jennie, thoroughly alarmed. "We musn"t let her stay there and nurse that young one. Why! what ever would we do if Ruthie Fielding didn"t graduate?"
"The cla.s.s would be without a head," declared Mercy.
"It would be without a heart, at least--and a great, big one overflowing with love and tenderness," cried Nettie Parsons, wiping her eyes.
"I don"t want any more breakfast," said Jennie, pushing her plate away.
"Don"t talk like that, Nettie. You"ll get me to crying too. And that always spoils my digestion."
"If Ruth isn"t with us when we get our diplomas, I"m sure I don"t want any!" exclaimed Mary c.o.x. And she meant it, too. Mary c.o.x believed that she owed her brother"s life to Ruth Fielding, and although she was not naturally a demonstrative girl, there was n.o.body at Briarwood Hall who admired the girl of the Red Mill more than Mary.
In fact, the threat of disaster to Ruth"s graduation plans cast a pall of gloom over the school. The moving pictures were forgotten; Amy Gregg"s part in the destruction of the West Dormitory ceased to be a topic of conversation. Was Ruth Fielding going to be held in quarantine? grew to be a more momentous question than any other.
Ruth, however, was only absent from her accustomed haunts for two days.
The second day she remained to attend the patient because Amy begged so hard to have her stay.
In her weakness and pain the sullen, secretive girl had turned instinctively to the one person who had been uniformly gentle and kind to her throughout all her trouble. Nothing that Amy had done or said, had turned Ruth from her; and the barriers of girl"s nature and of her evil pa.s.sions were broken down.
It was not, perhaps, wholly Amy Gregg"s fault that her disposition was so warped. She had received bad advice from some aunts, who had likewise set the child a bad example in their treatment of Mr. Gregg"s second wife, when he had brought her home to be a mother to Amy.
The poor child suffered so much from the effect of the poison ivy that the other girls, and not alone those of her own grade, "just _had_ to be sorry for Amy," as Mary Pease said.
"To think!" said that excitable young girl. "She might even lose her eyesight if she"s not careful. My! it must be dreadful to get poisoned with that nasty ivy. I"ll be afraid to go into the woods the whole summer."
Of course, it took time for these sentiments to circulate through the school, and for a better feeling for Amy Gregg to come to the surface; but the poor girl was laid up for two weeks in Mrs. Sadoc Smith"s best bedroom, and a fortnight is a long time in a girls" boarding school. At least, it sometimes seems so to the pupils.
What helped change the girls" opinion of Amy, too, was the fact that Mrs.