When Maria had put the house in order she took up her patient watching, and the sick woman's agonizing wails seemed to reproach her.
From hour to hour she kept reckoning the times and the distances.
"My father should not be far from St.Coeur de Marie ...

If the doctor is there they will rest the horse for a couple of hours and come back together.

But the roads must be very bad; at this time, in the spring, they are sometimes hardly passable." And then a little later:--"They should have left; perhaps in going through La Pipe they will stop to speak to the cure; perhaps again he may have started as soon as he heard, without waiting for them.

In that case he might be here at any moment." But the fall of night brought no one, and it was only about seven o'clock that the sound of sleigh-bells was heard, and her father and the doctor arrived.

The latter came into the house alone, put his bag on the table and began to pull off his overcoat, grumbling all the while.
"With the roads in this condition," said he, "it is no small affair to get about and visit the sick.