That Girl of Johnson's — page 85: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

74 : THAT GIRL OF JOHNSON'’S. °* - and comrades. The outside air was damp and raw; they drew their chairs in a closer circle around the fire, and gossiped in tones growing constantly louder, thawed by the warmth and companionship about this latest event in their quiet lives, and by whose deed the mare was lamed. The women were forced to remain at home; they gos- siped with their daughters or their kinsfolk around the great hearth fires. Their needles were busv, their spin- ning wheels hummed; their lives were narrow, but there was work to be done as well as food for gossip. Only Dolores was idle. She stood at the window staring with unseeing eyes at the storm outside, straining her ears in vain to catch the hum of voices in her father’s room. Young Green was there, and two doctors, and a woman they said was a nurse. What need was there of a nurse she asked herself. She could nurse her father. Did they think she could not nurse her father? She could watch him day and night; she knew his ways better than they, better than any stranger cotld know them. And what was the judge’s son doing there?) Why should he be al- lowed there when she was not? He was her father; young Green had no cause to care for her father. No . reason. And what were the doctors doing there? If her father was only exhausted from exposure and lack of food why should he need two doctors? Men had been lost on the mountain before; they never needed nurses when they were brought home; their own women cared for them; she could care for her father. Outside the wind sobbed drearily ; the rain swirled up against the window. Brindle out in her pen lowed softly and uneasily ; she was unused to horses, and did not like the horses that had brought the doctors. Dolores heard her aimlessly ; her thoughts were too busy to be. disturbed by such sounds, and her ears were too used to them to heed when they were strained to catch other sounds. When her father was well enough they would send for ‘comicbooks (Ge)