Mrs. Erdstrom galloped into the room, shrieked into the transmitter, “Vell?  Yes, yes, dis is Erdstrom’s place!  Heh?  Oh, you vant de doctor?”

Kennicott appeared, growled into the telephone: 

“Well, what do you want?  Oh, hello Dave; what do you want?  Which Morgenroth’s?  Adolph’s?  All right.  Amputation?  Yuh, I see.  Say, Dave, get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there—­and have him take some chloroform.  I’ll go straight down from here.  May not get home tonight.  You can get me at Adolph’s.  Huh?  No, Carrie can give the anesthetic, I guess.  G’-by.  Huh?  No; tell me about that tomorrow—­too damn many people always listening in on this farmers’ line.”

He turned to Carol.  “Adolph Morgenroth, farmer ten miles southwest of town, got his arm crushed-fixing his cow-shed and a post caved in on him—­smashed him up pretty bad—­may have to amputate, Dave Dyer says.  Afraid we’ll have to go right from here.  Darn sorry to drag you clear down there with me——­”

“Please do.  Don’t mind me a bit.”

“Think you could give the anesthetic?  Usually have my driver do it.”

“If you’ll tell me how.”

“All right.  Say, did you hear me putting one over on these goats that are always rubbering in on party-wires?  I hope they heard me!  Well. . . .  Now, Bessie, don’t you worry about Nels.  He’s getting along all right.  Tomorrow you or one of the neighbors drive in and get this prescription filled at Dyer’s.  Give him a teaspoonful every four hours.  Good-by.  Hel-lo!  Here’s the little fellow!  My Lord, Bessie, it ain’t possible this is the fellow that used to be so sickly?  Why, say, he’s a great big strapping Svenska now—­going to be bigger ’n his daddy!”

Kennicott’s bluffness made the child squirm with a delight which Carol could not evoke.  It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor out to the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rachmaninoff better, nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies.

The sunset was merely a flush of rose on a dome of silver, with oak twigs and thin poplar branches against it, but a silo on the horizon changed from a red tank to a tower of violet misted over with gray.  The purple road vanished, and without lights, in the darkness of a world destroyed, they swayed on—­toward nothing.

It was a bumpy cold way to the Morgenroth farm, and she was asleep when they arrived.

Here was no glaring new house with a proud phonograph, but a low whitewashed kitchen smelling of cream and cabbage.  Adolph Morgenroth was lying on a couch in the rarely used dining-room.  His heavy work-scarred wife was shaking her hands in anxiety.

Carol felt that Kennicott would do something magnificent and startling.  But he was casual.  He greeted the man, “Well, well, Adolph, have to fix you up, eh?” Quietly, to the wife, “Hat die drug store my schwartze bag hier geschickt?  So—­schon.  Wie viel Uhr ist ’s?  Sieben?  Nun, lassen uns ein wenig supper zuerst haben.  Got any of that good beer left—­giebt ’s noch Bier?”