`` I just lit up a fire in the kitchen stove as quick 's I could and run . It rattled me to hear Zillah moaning so 's you could hear her all over the house . '' `` You need someone to look after you as bad as Zillah does , '' said Josephine severely . In a very few minutes she was ready , with a basket packed full of homely remedies , `` for like as not there 'll be no putting one 's hand on anything there , '' she muttered . She insisted on wrapping her big plaid shawl around David 's head and neck , and made him put on a pair of mittens she had knitted for Jack Sentner . Then she locked the door and they started across the gleaming , crusted field . It was so slippery that Josephine had to cling to David 's arm to keep her feet . In the rapture of supporting her David almost forgot everything else . In a few minutes they had passed under the bare , glistening boughs of the poplars on David 's lawn , and for the first time Josephine crossed the threshold of David Hartley 's house . Years ago , in her girlhood , when the Hartley 's lived in the old house and there were half a dozen girls at home , Josephine had frequently visited there . All the Hartley girls liked her except Zillah . She and Zillah never `` got on '' together . When the other girls had married and gone , Josephine gave up visiting there . She had never been inside the new house , and she and Zillah had not spoken to each other for years . Zillah was a sick woman -- too sick to be anything but civil to Josephine . David started at once for the doctor at the Creek , and Josephine saw that he was well wrapped up before she let him go . Then she mixed up a mustard plaster for Zillah and sat down by the bedside to wait . When Mrs. Tom Sentner came down the next day she found Josephine busy making flaxseed poultices , with her lips set in a line that betokened she had made up her mind to some disagreeable course of duty . `` Zillah has got pneumonia bad , '' she said , in reply to Mrs. Tom 's inquiries . `` The Doctor is here and Mary Bell from the Creek .
She 'll XXXXX on Zillah , but there 'll have to be another woman here to see to the work .
came glistening go making muttered packed said set visited wait