She found no further chance to say anything, but from that moment Emma began to think of letting Sarah know how much she needed her. She planned to hang out the cloth as she used to. She exaggerated its importance in the way of an invalid, until it attained the significance of an act of treason. She felt like a criminal even in thinking about it. Several times in the night she dreamed she had put the cloth out and that Jim and his wife had seen it and torn it down. She awoke two or three times to find herself sitting up in bed staring out of the window, through which the moon shone and the multitudinous sounds of the mid-summer insects came sonorously. Once her husband said, "What's the matter? It seems to me you'd rest better if you'd lay down and keep quiet." His voice was low enough, but it had a peculiar inflection, which made her sink back into bed by his side, shivering with fear and weeping silently. The next day Jim and her husband both went off to town, and Jim's wife, after about ten o'clock, said:-- "Now, Emmy, I'm going down to Smith's to get a dress pattern, and I want you to keep quiet right here in bed. I'll be right back; I'll set some water here, and I guess you won't want anything else until I get back. I'll run right down and right back." After hearing the door close, Emma lay for a few minutes listening, waiting until she felt sure Mrs. Harkey was well out of the yard, then she crept out of bed and crawled to the window. Mrs. Jim was far down the road; she could see her blue dress and her pink sunbonnet. The sick woman seized the sheet and pulled it from the bed; the clothes came with it, but she did not mind that. She pulled herself painfully up the stairway and across the rough floor of the chamber to the window which looked toward her sister's house, and with a wild exultation flung the sheet far out and dropped on her knees beside the open window. She moaned and cried wildly as she waved the sheet. The note of a scared child was in her voice. "Oh, Serry, come quick! Oh, I _need_ you, Serry! I didn't mean to be mean; I want to see you _so_! Oh, dear, oh, dear! Oh, Serry, come quick!" Then space and the world slipped away, and she knew nothing of time again until she heard the anxious voice of Sarah below. "Emmy, where _are_ you, Emmy?" "Here I be, Serry." With swift, heavy tread Sarah hurried up the stairs, and the dear old face shone upon her again; those kind gray eyes full of anxiety and of love. Emma looked up like a child entreating to be lifted. Her look so pitifully eager went to the younger sister's maternal heart. "You poor, dear soul! Why didn't you send for me before?" "Oh, Serry, don't leave me again, will you?" When Mrs. Harkey returned she found Sarah sitting by Emma's side in the bed-chamber. Sarah looked at her with all the grimness her jolly fat face could express.