Some of you Dutchmen will
be dying one of these days before you can fetch the doctor."
The door closing. Barney's wagon--the wheels silent in the snow, but the
wagon-body rattling. Kennicott clicking the receiver-hook to rouse the
night telephone-operator, giving a number, waiting, cursing mildly,
waiting again, and at last growling, "Hello, Gus, this is the doctor.
Say, uh, send me up a team. Guess snow's too thick for a machine. Going
eight miles south. All right. Huh? The hell I will! Don't you go back
to sleep. Huh? Well, that's all right now, you didn't wait so very darn
long. All right, Gus; shoot her along. By!"
His step on the stairs; his quiet moving about the frigid room while he
dressed; his abstracted and meaningless cough. She was supposed to be
asleep; she was too exquisitely drowsy to break the charm by speaking.
On a slip of paper laid on the bureau--she could hear the pencil
grinding against the marble slab--he wrote his destination. He went out,
hungry, chilly, unprotesting; and she, before she fell asleep again,
loved him for his sturdiness, and saw the drama of his riding by night
to the frightened household on the distant farm; pictured children
standing at a window, waiting for him.
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