DISASTER THREATENS
Before Curly could comply with Ruth's whispered request, her fingers
slipped on the edge of the flooring. "Oh!" she cried out, and--dropped as
much as three inches!
"Goodness me, Ruth!" gasped Ann Hicks. "Are you killed?"
"No--o. But I might as well have been as to be scared to death," declared
the girl of the Red Mill. "I never thought the cellar was so shallow."
There was a rustling near by. Ruth thought of rats and almost screamed
aloud. "Give me the lantern--quick!" she called up to Curly Smith.
"Here you are," said that youth. "And if Amy is down there she ought to be
ashamed of herself--making us so much trouble."
Amy was there, as Ruth saw almost immediately when she could throw the
radiance of the lantern about her. But Ruth did not feel like scolding the
younger girl.
Amy had crept away into a corner. Her movements made the rustling Ruth
had heard. She hid her face against her arm and sobbed with abandonment.
Her dress was torn and muddy, her shoes showed that she had waded in mire.
She had lost her hat and her flaxen hair was a tangle of briers and green
burrs.
"My _dear_!" cried Ruth, kneeling down beside her. "What does it mean? Why
did you come here? Oh, you're sick!"
A single glance at the flushed face and neck of the smaller girl, and a
tentative touch upon her wrist, assured Ruth of that last fact. Amy seemed
burning up with fever. Ruth had never seen a case of scarlet fever, but
she feared that might be Amy's trouble.
"How long have you been here?" she asked Amy.
"Si--since--since it got dark," choked the girl.
"Is your throat sore?" asked Ruth, anxiously.
"Yes, it is; aw--awful sore."
"And you're feverish," said Ruth.
"I--I'm aw--all shivery, too," wept Amy Gregg, quite given up to misery
now.
Ruth was confident that the smaller girl had developed the fever that she
feared. Chill, fever, sore throat, and all, made the diagnosis seem quite
reasonable.
"How did you get into this cellar?" she asked Amy.
"There's a hole in the underpinning over yonder," said the culprit.
"Come on, then; we'll get out that way. Can you walk?"
"Oh--oh--yes," choked Amy.
She proved this by immediately starting out of the cellar. Ruth lit the
way with the lantern.
"Hi!" shouted Curly Smith, "where are you going with that light?"
"Come back to the door," commanded Ruth's muffled voice in the cellar.
"You can find your way all right."
"What do you know about that?" demanded Ann. "Leaves us in the lurch for
that miserable child, who ought to be walloped."
"Oh, Ann, don't say that!" cried Ruth, as she and the sick girl appeared
at the mill door. "No! don't come near us. I'll carry the lantern myself
and lead Amy. She's not feeling well, but she can walk. We must get her to
Mrs. Smith's just as soon as possible and call a doctor."
"What's the matter with her?" demanded Curly, curiously.
"She feels bad. That's enough," said Ruth, shortly. "Come on, Amy."
For once Amy Gregg was glad to accept Ruth Fielding's help. She had no
idea what Ruth thought was the matter with her, and she stumbled on beside
the older girl, sleepy and ill, given up to utter misery. Curly and Ann
began to be suspicious when Ruth forbade them to approach Amy and herself.
"Old Scratch!" whispered the boy to the Western girl. "I bet Amy's got
small-pox or something. Ruth Fielding will catch it, too."
"Hush!" exclaimed Ann, fiercely. "It's not as bad as that."
It was a long walk to Mrs. Sadoc Smith's. At the last, Ruth almost carried
Amy, who was not a particularly small girl. Curly grabbed the lantern and
insisted upon walking close to them.
"No matter if I _do_ catch the epizootic; guess I'll get over it," said
the boy.
They finally came to the Smith house. Helen and Mrs. Sadoc Smith came out
on the porch when the dog barked. Ruth made Ann and Curly go ahead and
held back with the sick girl.
"You go right upstairs with Helen, Ann," commanded Ruth. "I want to talk
to Mrs. Smith about Amy. She must be put in a warm room downstairs."
Mrs. Sadoc Smith agreed to this proposal the instant she saw Amy's flushed
face and heard her muttering.
"You telephone for Doctor Lambert, Henry," commanded Mrs. Smith. "We'll
have him give a look at her--though I could dose her myself, I reckon, and
bring her out all right."
Ruth feared the worst. She secretly stuck to her first diagnosis that Amy
had scarlet fever, but she did not say this to Mrs. Smith. They put Amy to
bed between blankets, and Mrs. Smith succeeded in getting the girl to
drink a dose of hot tea.
"That'll start her perspiring, which won't do a bit of harm," she said to
Ruth. "But I never saw anybody's face so red before--and her hands and
arms, too. She's breaking all out, I do declare."
Ruth was thinking: "If they have to quarantine Amy, I'll be quarantined
with her. I'll have to nurse her instead of going to school. Poor little
thing! she will require somebody's constant attention.
"But, oh dear!" added the girl of the Red Mill, "what will become of my
school work? I'll never be able to graduate in the world. Lucky those
moving pictures are taken--I won't be needed any more in those. Oh, dear!"
Ruth did not allow a murmur to escape her lips, however. She insisted on
remaining by the patient all night, too. Mrs. Smith was not able to quiet
the sick girl as well as Ruth did when the delirium Amy developed became
wilder.
It was almost daylight before Dr. Lambert came. He had been out of town on
a case, but came at once when he returned to Lumberton and found the call
from Mrs. Sadoc Smith's.
"What is it, Doctor?" asked the old lady. "She's as red as a lobster. Is
it anything catching? This girl ought not to be here, if it is."
"This girl had better remain here till we find out just what is the
matter," the doctor returned, scowling in a puzzled way at the patient. He
had seen at once that Ruth could control Amy.
"But what is it?"
"Fever. Delirium. You can see for yourself. What its name is, I'll tell
you when I come again. Keep on just as you are doing, and give her this
soothing medicine, and plenty of cracked ice--on her tongue, at least.
That is what is the matter; she is consumed with thirst. I'll have to see
that eruption again before I can say for sure what the matter is."
He went, and left the house in a turmoil of excitement. Helen and Ann did
not wish to go to Briarwood and leave Ruth; but Mrs. Tellingham commanded
them to. Much to his delight, Curly was kept out of his school to run
errands.
Ruth got a nap on the lounge in the sitting room, and felt better. The
doctor returned at nine o'clock in the forenoon and by that time the sick
girl's face was so swollen that she could scarcely see out of her eyes.
Her hands and wrists were puffed badly, too.
"Where has she been?" demanded Dr. Lambert.
Ruth told him what they supposed had happened to Amy the day before and
where she had been found late at night.
"Humph!" grunted the medical practitioner. "That's what I thought. Effect
of the _Rhus Toxicodendron_. Bad case."
This sounded very terrible to Ruth until she suddenly remembered something
she had read in her botany. A great feeling of relief came over her.
"Oh! poison-ash!" she cried.
"Good land! Nothin' but poison ivy?" demanded Mrs. Sadoc Smith.
"Poison oak, or poison sumac--whatever you have a mind to call it. But a
bad case of it, I assure you. I'll leave more of the cooling draught; and
I'll send up a salve to put on her face and hands. Don't let it get into
the poor child's eyes--and don't let her tear off the mask which she will
have to wear."
"Then there is no danger of scarlet fever," whispered Ruth, feeling
relieved.