The only fault that I could find with the way things had gone so far was
that Sally had a disgusting headache that marred her pleasure and her
sense of humor. She hadn't said very much, and had laughed with only a
half-heart at things that had seemed to me excruciatingly funny. For
instance, when Billoo was seized with the cramps she had barely smiled,
and once or twice when I had been doing the talking she had looked
pityingly at me, instead of roaring with laughter, the way a wife
should do.
And when we got to the house, she said that if we would excuse her she
would go to her room and lie down.
"I've just got one of my usual headaches," she said.
That remark worried me, because it was the first headache she had ever
complained of to _me_; and when, after she had gone upstairs, Miss
Randall said, "Maybe Sally ought to see the doctor," I had a sudden
awful, empty, gulpy feeling. Suppose she was going to be really sick!
Suppose she was going to have pneumonia or scarlet-fever or spinal
meningitis! Here we were, cut off from medical assistance till Wednesday
morning. And it was our own fault--mine; mine, for being _too_ funny.
Then I thought, "Maybe those men on the float are losing all the money
they've got in the world," and that made me feel pretty glum; and then I
thought, "Maybe poor Billoo is drowned by now," and I went cold
all over.
"Why don't you make the trump, Sam?" said Mrs. Giddings.
"Good Heavens!" I said. "Did I deal? Won't somebody play my hand? I'm
worried about Sally."
Then I bolted upstairs, and there was Sally lying on her bed, with a
glass tube sticking out of her mouth.
"How are you," I said, "and what are you doing?"
"I feel rather sick, Sam," she said. And she looked so pale that I could
have screamed. "And I'm taking my temperature."
"Do you think you've got fever?" I cried.
"I don't know," she said.
"Oh, Sally--Sally!" I cried. "Forgive me--it's all my fault--and I love
you so--My God! what shall I do? I know--"
Then I kissed her, and ran out of the room, and all the way to the
boat-house. I found a bathing-suit, undressed, put it on, tore down to
the pier, and went overboard. I suppose the water was ghastly cold, but
I didn't feel it. I suppose I never should have gotten all the way
across to the main-land if I hadn't been boiling with fear and
excitement, and besides I walked and waded across the middle ground and
got a rest that way. The men on the float kept calling to me, and asking
me questions, but I hadn't enough breath nor reason to answer them; I
just swam and swam and swam.
About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible
pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop
kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while
to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other,
running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He
is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was
desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some
brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run,
but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very
fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its
neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit.
Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and
I took the oars, and then we went faster.
When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally
surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the
canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a
self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as
he could.
We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off.
And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the
whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of
all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance
a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor....
The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed
into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come
out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very
solemn, and closed the door behind him.
"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf.
"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom
tooth."
"Good Lord!" I said, "is that all?"
"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_."
"Oh!" I said, "oh! What ought I to do?"
"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe
laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her."
But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying.
I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was
crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad.
When the doctor had returned to Stepping-Stone, he got the _Hobo's_
captain on the telephone and told him from me to bring the _Hobo_ back
to Idle Island at once. She came about six, just as the tide was getting
high, and she brought rescue to the men on the float, and, better than
rescue, she brought the evening papers.
There had been a big day on Wall Street; one of the biggest in its
history. And the men whom we had kept from going to business had made,
among them, hundreds of thousands of dollars, just by sitting still.
But they were ungrateful, especially Billoo. He complained bitterly, and
said that he would have made three times as much money if he had been
_on the spot_.
* * * * *
When the men paid the bets that they had lost to me, I turned the money
over to my father's secretary and told him to deposit it as a
special account.
"What shall I call the account?" he asked.
"Call it," I said, "the account of W. Tooth."