“Howdy,” said Lovey, as Father shook hands with him and the toad at the same time.  “Did you get any more cholera?  Did the medicine work?”

“Yes, the medicine worked—­more ways than one,” answered Father with a pleased laugh.  And he talked to Lovelace Peyton all the time about a man who got blown up in a mine that he saw in Pennsylvania, so that he made no objections while Uncle Pompey took out all his “live stock.”

While the Idol and Roxanne and I did up the room, with his own hands Father bathed Lovelace Peyton and put on his clean, patched little night-clothes; and I saw one big tear, that came from the very bottom of the big man’s heart, I know, splash on the biggest patch, as he was guiding the little groping hands into the armhole.

Then while I was buttoning Roxanne into a clean dress and the Idol was carrying out the last mop, the doctor came in the front door.  I was so dirty with the cleaning that I retired to the kitchen and helped the Idol into his collar and coat and to get his hands clean so he could hurry on in to help.  Uncle Pompey had got his usual violent spell of asthma and I had just lighted his pipe for him when the Idol came back to the door of the kitchen.

“You’ll have to come, Phyllis,” he said, with a smile that took the anxiety off his face for an instant.  “Lovey refuses to let the doctor touch him without you.  Come quick!  The doctor says the light is beginning to go.”

I went, soiled dress and crying eyes and hair all rumpled and mussed with the excitement.

“Phyllie,” said Lovelace Peyton, who was sitting up in bed defying them all, “I ain’t a-going to let that doctor touch me ’thout you stand right here and tell me how it all looks just as he does it.  Don’t leave out any bleed that comes, or any blue flesh or nerves or nothing.  You know how, ’cause I have teached you.  Neither Doug or Roxy ain’t no good with symptoms.”

“I will, Lovelace Peyton, I will,” I answered; but I shuddered, for how could I stand to see him tortured, as I felt he was going to be?

[Illustration:  “You stand right here and tell me how it all looks”]

But I did—­and it makes me weak to think about it now so that I shake all over.  As the instruments pried and pulled and injected the aseptic solutions I held his hand tight and talked as hard as I could.  At the worst places I told the most awful lies about how horrible it looked and placed all the frightful symptoms of every disease I had read to him, right in his eyes.  It sounded dreadful but I knew that it interested him and helped in a way nothing else could.

“Go on, Phyllie, tell more,” he would groan as I stopped for breath—­and on I would go piling inflammation on suppuration.

Finally, after what seemed an age, the doctor drew a long sigh and looked up at me with a kindly expression that I knew meant “saved.”  For a minute I reeled, and I do believe I would have learned what fainting meant the same day I learned crying, if those little fingers hadn’t held on to me tight while the doctor gave just a whiff of chloroform to ease the twitching nerves.  He had been obliged to do the operation without it, but risked just the whiff.