It was Skinner. Then someone
took him by the arm and said something about his having
enough, and Tom felt himself being led across a floor
that rose and fell strangely, to a black lounge that
tried to slide away from him and then came back suddenly
and hit him.
The wind raged and howled with increasing violence around
the granary where Arthur lay tossing upon his hard bed.
It seized the door and rattled it in wanton playfulness,
as if to deceive the sick man with the hope that a friend's
hand was on the latch, and then raced blustering and
screaming down to the meadows below. The fanning mill
and piles of grain bags made fantastic shadows on the
wall in the lantern's dim light, and seemed to his
distorted fancy like dark and terrible spectres waiting
to spring upon him.
Pearl knelt down beside him, tenderly bathing his burning
face.
"Why do you do all this for me, Pearl?" he asked slowly,
his voice coming thick and painfully.
She changed the cloth on his head before replying.
"Oh, I keep thinkin' it might be Teddy or Jimmy or maybe
wee Danny," she replied gently, "and besides, there's
Thursa."
The young man opened his eyes and smiled bravely.
"Yes, there's Thursa," he said simply.
Pearl kept the fire burning in the kitchen--the doctor
might need hot water. She remembered that he had needed
sheets too, and carbolic acid, when he had operated on
her father the winter before.
Arthur did not speak much as the night wore on, and Pearl
began to grow drowsy in spite of all her efforts.
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