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Kohler and Johnny went to get help. "You better go home now, I think," said Mrs. Tellamantez, in closing her narration. Thea hung her head and looked wistfully toward the blanket. "Couldn't I just stay till they come?" she asked. "I'd like to know if he's very bad." "Bad enough," sighed Mrs. Tellamantez, taking up her work again.
Tellamantez held her shell to Thea's ear, and she heard the roaring, as before, and distant voices calling, "Lily Fisher! Lily Fisher!" Mr. Kronborg considered Thea a remarkable child; but so were all his children remarkable.
She was glad when the doctor came out. The Mexican woman rose and stood respectful and expectant. The doctor held his hat in his hand and looked kindly at her. "Same old thing, Mrs. Tellamantez. He's no worse than he's been before. I've left some medicine. Don't give him anything but toast water until I see him again. You're a good nurse; you'll get him out." Dr. Archie smiled encouragingly.
Tellamantez took out her drawn-work and pinned it to her knee. Ray could talk well about the large part of the continent over which he had been knocked about, and Johnny was appreciative. "You been all over, pretty near. Like a Spanish boy," he commented respectfully. Ray, who had taken off his coat, whetted his pocketknife thoughtfully on the sole of his shoe. "I began to browse around early.
She went home, and the doctor went back to his lamp and his book. He never left his office until after midnight. If he did not play whist or pool in the evening, he read. It had become a habit with him to lose himself. Thea's twelfth birthday had passed a few weeks before her memorable call upon Mrs. Tellamantez.
Tellamantez's somber face, she was thinking that there is nothing so sad in the world as that kind of patience and resignation. It was much worse than Johnny's craziness. She even wondered whether it did not help to make Johnny crazy. People had no right to be so passive and resigned. She would like to roll over and over in the sand and screech at Mrs. Tellamantez.
He glanced about the little garden and wrinkled his brows. "I can't see what makes him behave so. He's killing himself, and he's not a rowdy sort of fellow. Can't you tie him up someway? Can't you tell when these fits are coming on?" Mrs. Tellamantez put her hand to her forehead. "The saloon, doctor, the excitement; that is what makes him. People listen to him, and it excites him."
He knows nothing," she said quietly, folding her hands over her drawn-work. Thea learned that Wunsch had been out all night, that this morning Mrs. Kohler had gone to look for him and found him under the trestle covered with dirt and cinders. Probably he had been trying to get home and had lost his way. Mrs. Tellamantez was watching beside the unconscious man while Mrs.
Kohler had to send her home after a tearful apology. On Saturday morning she set out for the Kohlers' again, but on her way, when she was crossing the ravine, she noticed a woman sitting at the bottom of the gulch, under the railroad trestle. She turned from her path and saw that it was Mrs. Tellamantez, and she seemed to be doing drawn-work.
"ACH, I tell you, she look like the Frau Tellamantez, some-thing. Long face, long chin, and ugly al-so." "Did she die a long while ago?" "Die? I think not. I never hear, anyhow. I guess she is alive somewhere in the world; Paris, may-be. But old, of course. I hear her when I was a youth. She is too old to sing now any more." "Was she the greatest singer you ever heard?" Wunsch nodded gravely.
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