But Maddy’s disappointment was keener than his own, and so, after the sorrowful words, “And I failed, too,” he tried to comfort the poor child, who, leaning her throbbing head against his shoulder, sobbed bitterly, as in the soft spring twilight they drove back to the low red cottage where grandma waited for them. CHAPTER V. THE RESULT. It was Farmer Green’s new buggy and Farmer Green’s bay colt which, three days later, stopped before Dr. Holbrook’s office, and not the square-boxed wagon, with old Sorrel attached, for the former was standing quietly in the chip-yard, behind the low red house, while the latter, with his nose over the barn-yard fence, was neighing occasionally, as if he missed the little hands which had daily fed him the oatmeal he liked so much, and which now lay hot and parched and helpless upon the white counterpane which Grandma Markham had spun and woven herself. Maddy might have been just as sick as she was if the examination had never occurred, but it was natural for those who loved her to impute it all to the effects of excitement and cruel disappointment, so there was something like indignation mingling with the sorrow gnawing at the hearts of the old couple as they watched by their fever-stricken darling. Farmer Green, too, shared the feeling, and numerous at first were his animadversions against that _prig of a Holbrook_, who was not fit to doctor a _cat_, much less “examine a _school-marm_.” But when Maddy grew so sick as not to know him or his wife, he laid aside his prejudices, and suggested to Grandpa Markham that Dr. Holbrook be sent for. “He’s great on fevers,” he said, “and is good on curin’ sick folks, I s’pose;” so, though he would have preferred some one else should have been called, confidence in the young doctor’s skill won the day, and grandpa consented, and Farmer Green was sent for the physician, to whom he said, with his usual bluntness: “Well, you nigh about killed our little Maddy t’other day, when you refused the stifficut, and now we want you to cure her.” The doctor looked up in surprise, but Farmer Green soon explained his meaning, making out a most aggravated case, and representing Maddy as wild with delirium. “Keeps talkin’ about the big books, the Latin and the Hebrew, and even Catechism, as if such like was ’lowed in our school. I s’pose you didn’t know no better; but if Maddy dies, you’ll have it to answer for, I reckon.” The doctor did not try to excuse himself, but hastily took down the medicines he thought he might need, and stowed them carefully away. He had expected to hear from that examination, but not in this way, and rather nervously he made some inquiries, as to how long she had been ill, and so forth.