IN THE SPAN OF A DAY
Kenny slept heavily until three that afternoon. Don wakened him.
"My sister is here," he said.
"Joan!"
Don stared a little at his quick, astonished warmth.
"She wired Doctor Cole," he said, "and went to the farm. He brought
her back with him at noon."
"The heart of her! I might have known. And Brian?"
Brian, it seemed, was wakeful and nervous, his pain intense. The
pressure symptoms had not advanced.
"Head's better," Don finished. "They've watched him like a hawk. But
they're letting up a bit now--"
"And Dr. Barrington?"
"Asleep downstairs."
"Here?"
"Yes. We found another cot. The car's in Grogan's shed."
From the quarry below came the rumble of a blast.
"Would you think--" he demanded, but the futility of his protest made
him dumb.
"The world keeps on going," said Kenny. He dressed hurriedly.
"Women," commented Don gloomily, following him down the stairs, "are
queer. My sister wept all over me. As if I hadn't had enough
shocks--"
He caught his breath and stumbled. In the room below Barrington
stirred.
"Quiet, Don!" warned Kenny, sensing the tears of heartbreak that
quivered on his lashes. He read the boy's hot heart with a renewed
shock of understanding; they were namelessly akin.
Cold sunlight lay upon the cluster of shacks. The wind that bore the
rumble of the quarry upward was sharp and gusty and laden with stinging
particles of grit. A group of Italian women, chattering and
gesticulating in, apparently, unheeded unison, lingered near the shack
where Brian lay, agonizingly conscious of nerve and body, irritably
weary of the inevitable doctor at his bedside. Kenny charged them with
a look of indignation and shooed them to retreat in maledictory Italian.
Inside Joan was busy at the stove.
Kenny caught her hands, protesting, praising, thanking in a breath, and
Don, regarding them with a look of frank and bitter comprehension,
moved off toward the window with all a boy's disgust. In the span of a
day he had learned and suffered over-much. Grogan's world of drills
and noise down there was heartless and insistent. . . . It went on and
on, puffing, drilling, sorting rattling stone. Up here in the shack
was the lunacy of heart-things apart from him. The thought filled him
with jealous anger. And upstairs-- He wheeled and glared, fighting
down the agony in his throat. Kenny was moving toward the stairway.
"Mr. O'Neill," barked Don, "Dr. Barrington particularly said you--you
were not to go up there. He said that Brian's got to have the--the
quiet kind around--"
Joan's quick stare of reproach brought the color to his face.
"I--I beg your pardon, Mr. O'Neill," he blurted. "He said--he said he
must have quiet."
"It's all right," said Kenny ruefully. "Quite all right. You've been
up?" he added quietly.
Don dug his toe into the floor and a hot flush suffused his forehead.
"To tell you the truth," he said with some annoyance, "Doctor
Barrington wouldn't let me in. He seems to be able to manage a good
many things at once."
"Ah!" said Kenny.
"We must find still another cot," said Joan, pouring coffee at the
stove.
So in the dark hours of nervous unrestraint that marked for Don and
Kenny that lagging period of terror and suspense, Joan stepped to the
helm and steered. And there was need of steering.
Chaos would have reigned without it.