He did so. He had been in the town but a few times in his whole life; she never. It was now wintry weather; the roads were wet, the winds were cold; the child coughed as she walked and shivered in her scanty and too thin clothes. The wise men at the hospital looked at her hastily among a crowd of sick people, and said some unintelligible words, and scrawled something on a piece of paper--a medicine, as it proved--which cost to buy more than a day of a sand carter's wage. 'Has she really any illness?' he asked, with wild, imploring eyes, of the chemist who made up the medicine. 'Oh no--a mere nothing,' said the man in answer; but thought as he spoke: 'The doctors might spare the poor devil's money. When the blood is all water like that there is nothing to be done; the life just goes out like a wind-blown candle.' 'Get her good wine; butcher's meat; plenty of nourishing food,' he added, reflecting that while there is youth there is hope. The father groaned aloud, as he laid down the coins which were the price of the medicine. Wine! Meat! Nourishment! They might as well have bidden him feed her on powdered pearls and melted gold. They got home that day footsore and wet through; he made a little fire of boughs and vine-branches, and, for the first time ever since it had been planted, he forgot to look at the lemon-tree. 'You are not ill, my Lizinanina?' he said eagerly. 'The chemist told me it was nothing.' 'Oh no, it is nothing,' said the child; and she spoke cheerfully and tried to control the cough which shook her from head to foot. Tears rolled down her father's cheeks and fell on to the smouldering heather, which he set all right. Wine! Meat! Nourishment! The three vain words rang through his head all night. They might as well have bade him set her on a golden throne and call the stars down from their spheres to circle round her. 'My poor little baby!' he thought; 'never did she have a finger ache, or a winter chill, or an hour's discomfort, or a moment's pain in mind or body until now!'