"'Wasn't that some trick?' said Mary gaily. 'I hadn't any idea how it
would work, but I just took a chance. I'll smoke his throat out again
once or twice before morning, just to kill all the germs, but you'll see
he'll be all right now.'
"Jims went right to sleep--real sleep, not coma, as I feared at first.
Mary 'smoked him,' as she called it, twice through the night, and at
daylight his throat was perfectly clear and his temperature was almost
normal. When I made sure of that I turned and looked at Mary Vance. She
was sitting on the lounge laying down the law to Susan on some subject
about which Susan must have known forty times as much as she did. But I
didn't mind how much law she laid down or how much she bragged. She had
a right to brag--she had dared to do what I would never have dared, and
had saved Jims from a horrible death. It didn't matter any more that she
had once chased me through the Glen with a codfish; it didn't matter
that she had smeared goose-grease all over my dream of romance the night
of the lighthouse dance; it didn't matter that she thought she knew more
than anybody else and always rubbed it in--I would never dislike Mary
Vance again. I went over to her and kissed her.
"'What's up now?' she said.
"'Nothing--only I'm so grateful to you, Mary.'
"'Well, I think you ought to be, that's a fact. You two would have let
that baby die on your hands if I hadn't happened along,' said Mary, just
beaming with complacency.
Pages:
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313