Page:Rilla of Ingleside (1921).djvu/285

 “Yes, we had sulphur. Susan went down with Mary to get it and I held Jims I hadn’t any hope—not the least. Mary Vance might brag as she liked—she was always bragging—but I didn’t believe any grandmother’s remedy could save Jims now. Presently Mary came back. She had tied a piece of thick flannel over her mouth and nose and she carried Susan’s old tin chip pan, half full of burning coals.

“You watch me,’ she said boastfully. ‘I’ve never done this, but I know how it’s done. It’s kill or cure—but that child is dying anyway.’

“She sprinkled a spoonful of sulphur over the coals; and then she picked up Jims, turned him over, and held him face downward, right over those choking, blinding fumes. I don’t know why I didn’t spring forward and snatch him away. Susan says it was because it was foreordained that I shouldn’t, and I think she is right, because it did really seem that I was powerless to move. Susan herself seemed transfixed, watching Mary from the doorway. Jim writhed in those big, firm, capable hands of Mary—oh yes, she is capable all right,—and choked and wheezed—and choked and wheezed—and I felt that he was being tortured to death—and then all at once, after what seemed to me an hour, though it really wasn’t long, he coughed up the membrane that was killing him. Mary turned him over and laid him back on his bed. He was white as marble and the tears were pouring out of his brown eyes—but that awful livid look was gone from his face and he could breathe quite easily.

“‘Wasn't that some trick?’ said Mary gaily. ‘I hadn’t any idea how it would work, but I just took a