The woman said that he had gone off to borrow a team of oxen and would not be back until the next day, and then she led Alison into a little roughly match-boarded room with an uncovered floor and very little furniture except the big stove in the middle of it. A child was toddling about the floor and another, a very little girl, lay with a flushed face in a canvas chair. The woman asked Alison no questions, but set about getting supper ready, and after a while Thorne, who had apparently been putting up the team, came in. As he did so the child in the chair held out her hands to him.
"Candies, Mavy," she cried. "Got some candies for me?"
Thorne picked her up and sat down with her on his knee, and taking a parcel out of his pocket he unwrapped and handed some of its contents to her. While she munched the sweetmeats he glanced at her mother interrogatively.
"Yes," declared the woman, "I'm right glad you came. She's been like this three or four days. I don't know what to do with her, or what's the matter."
Thorne looked down at the child before he turned toward his hostess.
"Well," he said, "I have at least a notion. A little feverish, for one thing."
He asked a question or two, and then held the child out to her mother.
"Will you take her while I get a draught mixed? I'm not sure that she'll sit down again in her chair."
The child bore this out, for she would neither sit alone nor go to her mother.
"If Mavy goes out I sure go along with him," she persisted.
The man got rid of her with some difficulty and, going out to where his wagon stood, he came back with a little brass-strapped box in his hand. He asked for some water and disappeared into an adjoining room, out of which there presently rose the clink of glass and a slight rattling. Then he called the woman, who gave the child to Alison, and when she came back somewhat relieved in face she laid out the supper. It much resembled the breakfast Alison had made at the hotel, only that strips of untempting salt pork were substituted for the hard steak.
An hour or two later she was given a very rude bunk filled with straw and a couple of blankets in an unoccupied room, and being tired out, she slept soundly. Lying still when she awakened early the next morning she heard the woman moving about the adjoining room until the outer door opened and a man whose voice she recognized as Thorne's came in.