"Oh, she's very sick--she's very sick!" Susan whispered, with white lips, to Billy who was at the telephone.
"What do you think of sponging her face off with ice-water?" he asked in a low tone. Susan fled to the kitchen. Mary Lou, seated by the table where the great roast stood in a confusion of unwashed plates and criss-crossed silver, was sobbing violently.
"Oh, Sue--she's dying!" whispered Mary Lou, "I know it! Oh, my God, what will we do!"
Susan plunged her hand in a tall pitcher for a lump of ice and wrapped it in a napkin. A moment later she knelt by her aunt's side. The sufferer gave a groan at the touch of ice, but a moment later she caught Susan's wrist feverishly and muttered "Good!"
"Make all these fools go upstairs!" said Alfie's wife in a fierce whisper. She was carrying out plates and clearing a space about the couch. Virginia, kneeling by her mother, repeated over and over again, in an even and toneless voice, "Oh God, spare her--Oh God, spare her!"
The doctor was presently among them, dragged, Susan thought, from the faint odor of wine about him, from his own dinner. He helped Billy carry the now unconscious woman upstairs, and gave Susan brisk orders.
"There has undoubtedly been a slight stroke," said he.
"Oh, doctor!" sobbed Mary Lou, "will she get well?"
"I don't anticipate any immediate change," said the doctor to Susan, after a dispassionate look at Mary Lou, "and I think you had better have a nurse."
"Yes, doctor," said Susan, very efficient and calm.
"Had you a nurse in mind?" asked the doctor.
"Well, no," Susan answered, feeling as if she had failed him.
"I can get one," said the doctor thoughtfully.
"Oh, doctor, you don't know what she's BEEN to us!" wailed Mary Lou.
"Don't, darling!" Susan implored her.
And now, for the first time in her life, she found herself really busy, and, under all sorrow and pain, there was in these sad hours for Susan a genuine satisfaction and pleasure. Capable, tender, quiet, she went about tirelessly, answering the telephone, seeing to the nurse's comfort, brewing coffee for Mary Lou, carrying a cup of hot soup to Virginia. Susan, slim, sympathetic, was always on hand,- -with clean sheets on her arm or with hot water for the nurse or with a message for the doctor. She penciled a little list for Billy to carry to the drugstore, she made Miss Foster's bed in the room adjoining Auntie's, she hunted up the fresh nightgown that was slipped over her aunt's head, put the room in order; hanging up the limp garments with a strange sense that it would be long before Auntie's hand touched them again.