“If faith can move mountains it ought to heal easily one poor, little toddlekins,” muttered Farr.
A new doctor came the next day, a breezy young man, a talkative and frank young man, the assistant of the over-worked city physician, whose municipal duties had obliged him to take on helpers.
“I shall ask him, hey--about the shrine?” whispered Etienne to Farr while the doctor was examining the child.
“Yes; he'll be more patient with you than with me.”
“And do you think that pretty soon she can go on the railway if I be very careful, good docteur?” asked the old man, wistfully, apologetically.
“On the pilgrimage to the shrine of the good Sainte Anne in the Canada country.”
“Don't you realize what this case is?” demanded the young physician.
“He have not say--he hurry in, he hurry out.”
“Then I can talk right out to you two. This is a case of typhoid that will be fatal in twenty-four hours. There's no use lying about it.”
Old Etienne's mouth and eyes seemed to sink deep into his wrinkles, as if Time had forced him suddenly to swallow an extra score of years. He looked at Farr's blank and whitening face, and as quickly looked away.
“Break it to her grandmother,” advised the doctor, nodding toward the kitchen where the good woman was at work.
“But you don't know what you say,” stammered the old man.
“It so happens that I do, my man. I've been handling too many of these cases to be fooled. Why, I've got more than fifty cases of typhoid in this city--just myself.”
“But she has had sun and fresh air--on the canal bank where I tend the rack.”
“Sun and fresh air can't cure victims of the poison that is being pumped through the water-mains of this city,” snapped the doctor.
The doctor turned and stared at Farr, for the husky croak of his exclamation had not sounded human.
“That's what I said. You can't have lived very long in this state not to know what we're up against on the water proposition.”
“I haven't lived here long. But about the child--it can't--”
“Why, this Consolidated Company is owned by Colonel Dodd and his politicians--and they own all the city and town water systems in this state,” said the doctor, no longer interested in his patient--exploding with the violence of imprudent youth. “They boss mayors, the aldermen, the politicians--boss the governor himself. That's because they've got the machine and the money. They've got a lot of money, because they won't wake up and spend it to lay lines far enough to tap the lakes in the hills. They tap these rotten rivers at our back doors, pump poison through the mains, sell it at prices that yield them twenty percent dividends. They say the water is all right--and back it up with analyses. I say it's all wrong.”