Tom hesitated.

“Remember, Tom, he has a father and a mother and four brothers, and a girl called Thursa, and an uncle that is a bishop, and how’d we ever face them when we go to heaven if we just set around and let Arthur die?”

“What is it, Pearl?” Mrs. Motherwell said coming into the room, having heard Pearl’s excited tones.

“It’s Arthur, ma’am.  Come out and see him.  You’ll see he needs the doctor.  Ginger tea and mustard plasters ain’t a flea-bite on a pain like what he has.”

“Let’s give him a dose of aconite,” Tom said with conviction; “that’ll fix him.”

Mrs. Motherwell and Pearl went over to the granary.

“Don’t knock at the door,” Pearl whispered to her as they went.  “Ye can’t tell a thing about him if ye do.  Arthur’d straighten up and be polite at his own funeral.  Just look in the crack there and you’ll see if he ain’t sick.”

Mrs. Motherwell did see.  Arthur lay tossing and moaning across his bed, his letter pad and pencil beside him on the floor.

Mrs. Motherwell did not want Tom to go to Millford that night.  One of the harvesters’ excursions was expected—­was probably in—­then—­there would be a wild time.  Besides, the two-dollar bill still worried her.  If Tom had it he might spend it.  No, Tom was safer at home.

“Oh, I don’t think he’s so very bad,” she said.  “We’ll get the doctor in the morning if he isn’t any better.  Now you go to bed, Pearl, and don’t worry yourself.”

But Pearl did not go to bed.

When Mrs. Motherwell and Tom had gone to their own rooms, she built up the kitchen fire, and heated a frying-pan full of salt, with which she filled a pair of her own stockings and brought them to Arthur.  She remembered that her mother had done that when her father was sick, and that it had eased his pain.  She drew a pail of fresh water from the well, and brought a basinful to him, and bathed his burning face and hands.  Arthur received her attentions gratefully.

Pearl knew what she would do.  She would run over and tell Jim, and Jim would go for the doctor.  Jim would not be in bed yet, she knew, and even if he were, he would not mind getting up.

Jim would go to town any time she wanted anything.  One time when she had said she just wished she knew whether Camilla had her new suit made yet, Jim jumped right up and said he’d go and see.

Mrs. Motherwell had gone to her room very much concerned with her own troubles.  Why should Tom fall into evil ways? she asked herself—­a boy who had been as economically brought up as he was.  Other people’s boys had gone wrong, but she had alway thought that the parents were to blame some way.  Then she thought of Arthur; perhaps he should have the doctor.  She had been slow to believe that Polly was really sick—­and had had cause for regret.  She would send for the doctor, in the morning.  But what was Pearl doing so long in the kitchen?—­She could hear her moving around—­Pearl must go to her bed, or she would not be able to get up in the morning.