I was sure he was dead. He did not move, and when I caught his hands and

called him frantically, he did not hear me. And so, with the horror over

me, I half fell down the stairs and roused Jim in the studio.

They all came with lights and blankets, and they carried him into the

tent and put him on the couch and tried to put whisky in his mouth. But

he could not swallow. And the silence became more and more ominous until

finally Anne got hysterical and cried, "He is dead! Dead!" and collapsed

on the roof.

But he was not. Just as the lights in the tent began to have red rings

around them and Jim's voice came from away across the river, somebody

said, "There, he swallowed that," and soon after, he opened his eyes. He

muttered something that sounded like "Andean pinnacle" and lapsed into

unconsciousness again. But he was not dead! He was not dead!

When the doctor came they made a stretcher out of one of Jim's six-foot

canvases--it had a picture on it, and Jim was angry enough the next

day--and took him down to the studio. We made it as much like a

sick-room as we could, and we tried to make him comfortable. But he lay

without opening his eyes, and at dawn the doctor brought a consultant

and a trained nurse.

The nurse was an offensively capable person. She put us all out, and

scolded Anne for lighting Japanese incense in the room--although Anne

explained that it is very reviving. And she said that it was unnecessary

to have a dozen people breathing up all the oxygen and asphyxiating

the patient. She was good-looking, too. I disliked her at once. Any

one could see by the way she took his pulse--just letting his poor hand

hang, without any support--that she was a purely mechanical creature,

without heart.

Well, as I said before, she put us all out, and shut the door, and asked

us not to whisper outside. Then, too, she refused to allow any flowers

in the room, although Betty had got a florist out of bed to order some.

The consultant came, stayed an hour, and left. Aunt Selina, who proved

herself a trump in that trying time, waylaid him in the hall, and

he said it might be a fractured skull, although it was possibly only

concussion.

The men spent most of the morning together in the den, with the door

shut. Now and then one of them would tiptoe upstairs, ask the nurse how

her patient was doing, and creak down again. Just before noon they all

went to the roof and examined again the place where he had been found.

I know, for I was in the upper hall outside the studio. I stayed there

almost all day, and after a while the nurse let me bring her things as

she needed them. I don't know why mother didn't let me study nursing--I

always wanted to do it. And I felt helpless and childish now, when there

were things to be done.




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