“‘Wa’al?’ I says.

“‘She’s quiet fer the present,’ he says, takin’ a pad o’ paper out o’ his pocket, an’ writin’ on it.

“‘Do you know Mis’ Jones, your next-door neighbor?’ he says.  I allowed ‘t I had a speakin’ acquaintance with her.

“‘Wa’al,’ he says, ‘fust, you step in an’ tell her I’m here an’ want to see her, and ast her if she won’t come right along; an’ then you go down to my office an’ have these things sent up; an’ then,’ he says, ’you go down town an’ send this’—­handin’ me a note that he’d wrote an’ put in an envelope—­’up to the hospital—­better send it up with a hack, or, better yet, go yourself,’ he says, ‘an’ hurry.  You can’t be no use here,’ he says.  ‘I’ll stay, but I want a nurse here in an hour, an’ less if possible.’  I was putty well scared,” said David, “by all that, an’ I says, ‘Lord,’ I says, ‘is she as bad off as that?  What is it ails her?’

“‘Don’t you know?’ says the doc, givin’ me a queer look.

“‘No,’ I says, ’she hain’t ben fust rate fer a spell back, but I couldn’t git nothin’ out of her what was the matter, an’ don’t know what pertic’ler thing ails her now, unless it’s that dum’d bunnit,’ I says.

“At that the doctor laughed a little, kind as if he couldn’t help it.

“‘I don’t think that was hully to blame,’ he says; ’may have hurried matters up a little—­somethin’ that was liable to happen any time in the next two months.’

“‘You don’t mean it?’ I says.

“‘Yes,’ he says.  ‘Now you git out as fast as you can.  Wait a minute,’ he says.  ‘How old is your wife?’

“’F’m what she told me ‘fore we was married,’ I says, ’she’s thirty-one.’

“‘Oh!’ he says, raisin’ his eyebrows.  ‘All right; hurry up, now,’

“I dusted around putty lively, an’ inside of an hour was back with the nurse, an ’jest after we got inside the door—­” David paused thoughtfully for a moment and then, lowering his tone a little, “jest as we got inside the front door, a door upstairs opened an’ I heard a little ‘Waa! waa!’ like it was the leetlist kind of a new lamb—­an’ I tell you,” said David, with a little quaver in his voice, and looking straight over the off horse’s ears, “nothin’ ’t I ever heard before nor since ever fetched me, right where I lived, as that did.  The nurse, she made a dive fer the stairs, wavin’ me back with her hand, an’ I—­wa’al—­I went into the settin’ room, an—­wa’al—­ne’ mind.

“I dunno how long I set there list’nin’ to ’em movin’ ’round overhead, an’ wonderin’ what was goin’ on; but fin’ly I heard a step on the stair an’ I went out into the entry, an’ it was Mis’ Jones.  ‘How be they?’ I says.

“‘We don’t quite know yet,’ she says.  ’The little boy is a nice formed little feller,’ she says, ‘an’ them childern very often grow up, but he is very little,’ she says.

“‘An’ how ‘bout my wife?’ I says.