"No offense!" mumbled Glenning, taking the hairy wrist which listlessly lay on the ragged counterpane and feeling for the pulse with tips of practiced fingers.
The children had huddled like sheep against the wall furthest away, a tattered, unkempt crew of misbegotten humanity; terrible fruit of a union of ignorance and brute passion. They said not a word, but clung to each other as though menaced by some visible danger. The woman stood in the center of the floor, also silent, her hands clasped under her dirty apron, and her stringy neck outstretched as she watched the doctor. The thing under Glenning's hand must have been made by God, but it hardly looked it. It would not have looked it in health, and in the grip of a loathsome disease it was doubly repulsive. The man's figure was thin and bony. He lay sick in his shirt and trousers, for he had no night clothes, to say nothing of underwear, which in all probability he had never known. His shoes were off, and his feet, knotty, and grimy with the ground-in dirt of many months, stuck from under the narrow coverlet which lay over him. His soiled shirt was open at the throat--a throat presenting alternate ridge and hollow, and covered scantily with colorless hair. His face was gaunt; his teeth broken and tobacco-stained; his nose twisted oddly. His hair was a sandy mop. His eyes were cunning and treacherous. His face was already marked with dull red spots, and he was burning with fever.
"Two weeks off 'n' on, I reck'n," answered the man.
"You should have been in bed ten days, at least. You're pretty sick, my man."
A shadow of alarm flashed over the bestial countenance.
"I won't _die_, doc, will I? Yo' don't mean I'm gunta _die_!"
In his eagerness he grasped the sleeve of the figure kneeling beside him.
"You've _got_ to cyore 'im, doc!" wailed the woman. "I can't live 'ithout my man!"
"You've waited too long before seeking help," continued John, getting to his feet. "There's a chance for you--a slim one, but I'll do what I can."
He found a rickety chair, and sat down gingerly.
The older children began to snuffle, and the younger ones burst out crying and ran to their mother, hiding their dirty faces in her dirtier clothes.
"Small chance in this reeking hole for a man with small-pox," mused Glenning, then he looked at Mrs. Scribbens, and said: