Part 16 (1/2)

”It's a shame, Johnny. I ought to know what to do, but I don't. You come too, then.”

But Johnny refused to budge. He threw himself on his back on the veranda and beat the floor with his heels and wailed long heart-piercing wails that trembled into sobbing silence, only to begin all over with fresh vigor. Elliott was at her wits' end. She didn't dare go away and leave him; she was afraid he might kill himself crying. But mightn't he do so if she stayed? He pushed her away when she tried to comfort him.

There was only one thing that he wanted; he would have none of her, if she didn't give it to him.

Never in her life had Elliott Cameron felt so insignificant, so helpless and futile, as she did at that minute. ”Oh, you poor baby!”

she cried, and hated herself for her ignorance. Laura would have known what to do; Harriet Gordon would have known. Would n.o.body ever come?

”What's the matter with him?” The question barked out, brusque and sharp, but never had a voice sounded more welcome in Elliott Cameron's ears. She turned around in joyful relief to encounter a pair of gimlet-like black eyes in the face of an old woman. She was an ugly little old woman in a battered straw hat and a shabby old jacket, though the day was warm, and a faded print skirt that was draggled with mud at the hem. Her hair strayed untidily about her face and unfathomable scorn looked out of her snapping black eyes.

”It's a--a bee sting,” stammered the girl, shrinking under the scorn.

”Hee-hee-hee!” The old woman's laughter was cracked and high. ”What kind of a lummux are you? Don't know what to do for a bee sting!

Hee-hee! Mud, you gawk you, mud!”

She bent down and slapped up a handful of wet soil from the edge of the fern bed below the veranda. ”Put that on him,” she said and went away giggling a girl's shrill giggle and muttering between her giggles: ”Don't know what to do for a bee sting. Hee-hee!”

For a whole minute after the queer old woman had gone Elliott stood there, staring down at the spatter of mud on the steps, dismay and wrath in her heart. Then, because she didn't know anything else to do and because Johnny's screams had redoubled, she stooped, and with gingerly care picked up the lump of black mud and went over to the boy. Mud couldn't hurt him, she thought, put on outside; it certainly couldn't hurt him, but could it help?

She sat down on the floor and lifted the little swollen fist and held the cool mud on it, neither noticing nor caring that some trickled down on her own skirt. She sat there a long time, or so it seemed, while Johnny's yells sank to long-drawn sobs and then ceased altogether as he snuggled forgivingly against her arm. And in her heart was a great shame and an aching feeling of inadequacy and failure. Elliott Cameron had never known so bitter a five minutes. All her pride and self-sufficiency were gone. What was she good for in a practical emergency? Just nothing at all. She didn't know even the commonest things, not the commonest.

”It must have been Witless Sue,” said Aunt Jessica, late that afternoon, when Elliott told her the story. ”She is a half-witted old soul who wanders about digging herbs in summer and lives on the town farm in winter. There's no harm in her.”

”Half-witted!” said Elliott. ”She knew more than I did.”

”You have not had the opportunity to learn.”

”That didn't make it any better for Johnny. Laura knows all those things, doesn't she? And Trudy, too?”

”I think they know what to do in the simpler emergencies of life.”

”I wish I did. I took a first-aid course, but it didn't have stings in it, not as far as we'd gone when I came away. We were taught bandaging and using splints and things like that.”

”Very useful knowledge.”

”But Johnny got stung,” said Elliott, as though nothing mattered beyond that fact. ”Do you think you could teach me things, now and then, Aunt Jessica? the things Laura and Trudy know?”

”Surely,” said Aunt Jessica, ”and very gladly. There are things that you could teach Laura and Trudy, too. Don't forget that entirely.”

”Could I? Useful things?” She asked the question with humility.

”Very useful things in certain kinds of emergency. What did Mrs.

Gordon do for Johnny when she got home?”

”Oh, she washed his hand and soaked it in strong soda and water, baking-soda, and then she bound some soda right on, for good measure, she said.”

”There!” said Aunt Jessica. ”Now you know two things to do for a bee sting.”

Elliott opened her eyes wide. ”Why, so I do, don't I? I truly do.”