On the Monday following, while I was in the midst of preparations for our start that week, Nona Clarke rang me up to say that Aylmer Bosanquet was very ill, and could I come at once to help to bring her into Regina. I had about ten minutes in which to catch the train. Helped by kind Mrs. W., I bundled a few things into a suit-case and ran. But I had to stop at a drug-store to get some sort of stimulant for Aylmer, as Nona had said that she seemed on the verge of a collapse. It is in a case like this that prohibition is so inconvenient. I could get neither brandy nor sal-volatile without a doctor's certificate--and yet I had often seen people who did not _look_ ill produce a certificate and get the stimulant they asked for. "Is there nothing you can give me?" I asked in desperation, and the shopman handed me some kind of ammonia, saying that was the only thing he could let me have. The bottle bore no directions, and when I asked how one should take it, and whether the dose would be about the same as sal-volatile, he replied indifferently: "Oh, yes, I think so." I just caught the train, which then steamed out of the station and waited an hour at North Regina. I found Aylmer very ill indeed, hardly able to speak, and without any of those little comforts which mean so much in sickness. The shack was all in disorder, too, as they were packing up to go on the prairie in the Ford roadster. Although she was so weak and ill she was full of interest in our work, and made me describe the journey from Winnipeg, but I soon saw that conversation was too much for her. Nona telephoned to a doctor in Regina, asking him to come out next day to see if the patient were fit to travel, in which case he was to accompany her back by the next train. All that night a dust storm raged, succeeded next morning by torrential rain. I went out to get milk and bread for breakfast, buying the latter from the Christian Chinaman, who inquired anxiously for Aylmer, and said, when I wished to pay for my purchase, "Eef it ees for de missionarees you need not pay." Then there was the problem of how to get the invalid to the station, as the shack was by this time surrounded with a sea of black mud which no car could traverse. But Nona found a man with a dray who promised to come if needed. The doctor's train was so late that there was only a quarter of an hour between his arrival and the departure of the return train. But he made a hasty examination, and said that though she was very weak it would be better to take her into Regina. It is so difficult to get nurses or medical attendance out on the prairie.[4]