About fifty feet from the pier on the main-land I began to get horrible pains up and down the muscles of my legs; and they wanted to stop kicking, but I wouldn't let them. I had to sit on the pier for a while to rest, but pretty soon I was able to stand, and somehow or other, running and walking, I got to the doctor's house in Stepping-Stone. He is very nice and an old friend, and the moment I told him Sally was desperately sick he said she wasn't, and I felt better. He gave me some brandy to drink, and we started for the island. I begged him to run, but he wouldn't. He walked leisurely and pointed out this tree as a very fine specimen and well grown, or that one as too much crowded by its neighbors. He was daft on forestry. Patients didn't interest him a bit. Finally, however, we got to the pier, and stole somebody's row-boat, and I took the oars, and then we went faster.
When we entered the house we found all the women except Sally surrounding Billoo. He was very red in the face and dressed only in the canoe sail; but he wasn't in the least embarrassed. He had a self-satisfied smile; and he was talking as fast and as loud as he could.
We told him to go to bed and be ashamed of himself, and sleep it off. And he said that nobody understood him, and denied having drunk the whole case of champagne, and he said that he was in perfect control of all his faculties, and that if the ladies wished him to, he could dance a hornpipe for them that he had learned when he was a sailor....
The doctor and I went upstairs; and while he was with Sally I changed into proper clothes; and then I waited outside the door for him to come out and tell me the worst. After a long time he came. He looked very solemn, and closed the door behind him.
"What _is_ it?" I said, and I think my voice shook like a leaf.
"Sam," he said gravely, "Sally is by way of cutting her first wisdom tooth."
"It's enough," said the doctor, "because it isn't a _tooth_."
"Why," said he, "I'd go in, and tell her how glad you are, and maybe laugh at her a little bit, and make much of her."
But I couldn't laugh at Sally, because she was crying.
I took her in my arms and made much of her, and asked her why she was crying, and she said she was crying because she was glad.