Aunt Hannah and Seth Part 10

"What can I do? Oh, what can I do?" he cried, running to and fro, and then, hardly aware of his movements, he shouted loudly for Gladys.

"Don't waken her!" Aunt Hannah cried warningly. "If you can't help me there is nothing she can do."

"Ain't she in the house?" Seth asked nervously.

He feared Aunt Hannah might die, and even though she was in no real danger, to stand idly by not knowing how to aid her was terrible.

He failed to observe that Snip was no longer in the room; but just at that moment his shrill barking was heard in an adjoining apartment, and Seth knew the dog had gone to find his little playmate.

"You mustn't get frightened after the danger is all over, my dear,"

Aunt Hannah said soothingly. "But for you the house would have been destroyed, and now we have nothing to fear."

"But you can't get up!" Seth wailed.

"That wouldn't be a great misfortune compared with losing our home, even if I never got up again," the little woman said quietly. "But I'm not going to lie here. Surely you can help me on to the couch."

"Tell me how to do it," Seth cried eagerly, and at that moment Gladys appeared in the doorway.

"Lean over so that I may put my arms around your neck," Aunt Hannah said, giving no heed to the girl's cry of alarm.

"She fell an' hurt herself," Seth said hurriedly to Gladys, as he obeyed the little woman's injunction. And then, as the latter put her uninjured arm over his neck, he tried to aid the movement by clasping her waist.

"If you can help me just a little bit we'll soon have her on the couch," he cried to Gladys, who by this time was standing at his side.

Aunt Hannah was a tiny woman, and the children, small though they were, did not find it an exceedingly difficult task to raise her bodily from the floor.

Then Gladys lighted a lamp, and it was seen that, in addition to the injuries received by the fall, Aunt Hannah had been grievously burned.

"Yes, I'm in some pain," she said in reply to Seth's anxious questioning; "but now that the house has been saved I have no right to complain. Get some flour, Gladys, and while you are putting it on the worst of the burns, perhaps Seth will run over to Mrs. Dean an' ask if she can come here a few minutes."

"Where does Mis' Dean live?" the lad asked hurriedly, starting toward the door; and he was already outside when Gladys replied:

"It's the first house past the grove where Snip and I went this afternoon!"

Seth gave no heed to his lameness as he ran at full speed down the road; the thought that now was the time when he might in some slight degree repay Aunt Hannah for having given shelter to him and Snip, lending speed to his feet.

The Dean family had not yet retired when he arrived at the farmhouse, and, stopping only sufficiently long to tell in fewest possible words of what had happened, Seth ran back to help Gladys care for the invalid, for he was feverishly eager to have some part in the nursing.

Aunt Hannah was on the couch with her wounds partially bandaged when the boy returned, and although her suffering must have been severe, that placid face was as serene as when he bade her good-night.

"Mis' Dean is comin' right away. What can I do?"

"Nothing more, my dear," the little woman replied quietly. "You have been of such great service to me this night that I can never repay you."

"Please don't say that, Aunt Hannah," Seth cried, his face flus.h.i.+ng with shame as he remembered the past. "If I could only do somethin'

real big, then perhaps you wouldn't think I was so awful bad."

"I believe you to be a good boy, Seth, and shall until you tell me to the contrary. Even then," she added with a smile, "I fancy it will be possible to find a reasonable excuse."

The arrival of Mrs. Dean put an end to any further conversation, and Seth was called upon to aid in carrying Aunt Hannah to the foreroom, in which was the best bed, although the little woman protested against anything of the kind.

"I am as well off in my own bed, Sarah Dean. Don't treat me as if I was a child who didn't know what was best."

"You are goin' into the foreroom, Hannah Morse, an' that's all there is about it. That bed hasn't been used since the year your brother Benjamin was at home, an' I've always said that if anything happened to you, an' I had charge of affairs, you should get some comfort out of the feathers you earned pickin' berries. We'll take her into the foreroom, boy, for it's the most cheerful, an' she deserves the best that's goin'."

"You can bet she does!" Seth exclaimed with great emphasis; and then he gave all his attention to obeying the many commands which issued from Mrs. Dean's mouth.

When the little woman had been disposed of according to her neighbor's ideas of comfort, Seth was directed to build a fire in the kitchen stove; Gladys received instructions to bring all the old linen to be found; and Snip was ordered into the shed.

Aunt Hannah protested vehemently against this last order, with the result that the dog was banished to Gladys' chamber, and then Mrs.

Dean proceeded to attend to the invalid without giving her a voice in any matter, however nearly it might concern herself.

Seth took up his station in the kitchen when other neighbors arrived, summoned most likely by Mr. Dean, and here Gladys joined him after what had seemed to the boy a very long time.

"How is she?" he asked when the girl came softly into the room as if thinking he might be asleep.

"Her hands and arms are burned very badly. Why, Seth, there are blisters as big as my hand, and Mrs. Dean says she suffers terribly; but the dear old woman hasn't made the least little complaint."

"That's 'cause she's so good. If I was like her I needn't bother my head 'bout what was goin' to happen after I died. It would be a funny kind of an angel who wasn't glad to see Aunt Hannah!"

"She'd have burned to death but for you."

"That ain't so, Gladys. I didn't do very much, 'cept throw the rugs an' my coat over her."

"She's just been telling Mrs. Dean that you saved her life, and the house."

"Did she really?" Seth cried excitedly. "Did she say it in them very same words?"

"Aunt Hannah made it sound a good deal better than I can. She said G.o.d sent you to this house to help her in the time of trouble, an' she's goin' to see that you always have a home here."

"Wasn't she kind'er out of her head?" Seth asked quickly. "I've heard Mother Hyde say that folks got crazy-like when they ached pretty bad."

"Aunt Hannah knew every word she was saying, and it's true that she might have burned to death if you hadn't been in the house, for I never heard a thing till Snippey came into my room barking."

"I hope I did do as much; but it don't seem jest true."

"Don't you think the house would have burned if some one hadn't put out the fire very quickly?"

"Perhaps so, 'cause the flames jumped up mighty high."

"And since she couldn't move, wouldn't she have been burned to death?"

"I hope so."

"Why, Seth Barrows, how wicked you are!"

"No, no, Gladys, I didn't mean I hoped she'd have burned to death; but I hoped I really an' truly saved her life, 'cause then she won't jump down on me so hard when I tell her."

"Tell her what?"