But now all I could do was to sit down by the bed, with my hands folded in my lap.  I have seen so many women do this for hours at a time, Aunt Jennie, and I could never understand how they did it without an awful attack of the fidgets.  But now I think I have found the solution.  I am persuaded that these women just sit down quietly, and that the strength flows back into them in some mysterious way, and presently they become as strong as ever, just as happens with those storage batteries of the automobile, which are all the time having to be recharged.  I don’t exactly know what the folded hands have to do with it, but they are certainly an indispensable part of the process.

Dr. Grant rested quietly enough, and sometimes, when he opened his eyes, I saw that he looked at me, in a strange, sad way.  But he was exhausted by the malady and the hard work of the previous days, and seemed too utterly weary to be suffering much pain.  At times the little boy would moan, and I would go to him.  It would only take a passing of my hand over the little forehead, or a drink of water, to quiet him again.  The poor wee man loves me, I think, and I hope he will never know what a tragedy he is responsible for, but, indeed, I hope he will learn, some day, that this great, rough fisherman, Yves, has laid down all of his life for him.  When the child was quiet I would return and sit again by the doctor.

After a short time Mr. Barnett and Yves returned, and were soon followed by Daddy and Susie, whose sturdy arm supported him.  Poor Dad!  He was looking aged and worried, and I felt ever so sorry for him.

Susie’s way of speaking to people is invariably to address them as if they were rather deaf, and as if no one else could possibly hear.

“Yis, sor,” she was saying, “it’s jist as you says, a real crazy, foolish thing.  But fur as I kin see them kind o’ things is what makes up the most o’ folk’s lives.  They is some gits ketched all by theirselves, and others gits ketched tryin’ ter help others, and some niver gits ketched at all an’ dies peaceful in the beds o’ they.  If there didn’t no one take chances th’ world wouldn’t hardly be no fit place ter live in.”

I suppose that Daddy could find no reply to such philosophy.  He was doubtless very angry on my account, and I am sure he had been giving Susie a piece of his mind, all the way down.  He entered the shack, ordering Susie to remain outside.

“Don’t you dare come in,” he said, quite exasperated.  “I have no doubt at all that you will have to look after all the rest of us when we get ill.  You can go back to your pots and pans or wait for me out of doors, just as you wish.”