After her morning devotions, she spent an hour in setting her room to rights; watering the plants on the window-sill, feeding the bird in the cage, and then, after a breakfast of the most frugal sort, she started on her way to her post. Although it was not yet eight o'clock when she emerged from the door of the tenement-house where she lodged, a haze of heat hung over the city like a pall, the sun was already beating with a sickening glare upon the sidewalk, which still showed signs of having been made a sleeping place by those who found their crowded quarters within too suffocating for endurance. On the doorstep, worn with the feet of the frequent passers, sat a weary woman, nursing her baby. Nora's heart sank as she noticed the deathly pallor of the little thing. She stopped, bent over, and listened to its breathing. Then she lifted the eyelid streaked with blue, and looked into the fast dimming eye. "That bairn needs a doctor," she said to the mother. "Come with me; there is a dispensary on the next block." Rising stupidly, with her infant in her arms, the woman in dull obedience followed her down the sun-baked block to the door marked: "DISPENSARY. "PATIENTS TREATED FREE FROM TEN TO TWELVE O'CLOCK." Nora looked at the sign in discouragement; instinct told her that two hours of delay would be fatal. The child was evidently nearing a state of collapse. Turning about entirely baffled, Nora's eyes fell upon an elderly man coming down the street at a brisk trot, a travelling bag in one hand and a large white umbrella in the other. He was evidently a gentleman,--which was strange, for gentlemen did not often appear in Bayard Street. What was stranger still, he looked up at the numbers of the houses as if he were seeking a friend, and, strangest of all, at the sight of herself he took off his hat, and her astonished gaze rested upon Dr. Cricket. "Well, well, Captain," the little Doctor cried, peering at her with his near-sighted frown. "I _am_ in luck. I came down on the night boat, and hurried over here right away; but we were so late I was afraid you might have got off to headquarters to report for duty. I promised Miss Standish when I left Nepaug that I would surely see you on my way through New York. She felt so worried about your coming back so soon to this town, which is like a bake-oven,--or would be if it smelled better." All this the good Doctor poured forth so rapidly that Nora could not get in a word edgewise. When at length she found space to utter a reply, she cried out, "Oh, Doctor, never mind me, but take pity on this bairn! It's in an awfu' way." "Pooh, Pooh, nothing of the sort!" answered the Doctor, with professional cheerfulness, before he had fairly glanced at the child. Then aside to Nora: "We must get into the dispensary somehow. Water, hot and cold, are what the child needs. It is near a convulsion."