Mrs. Kettering turned her eyes upon her daughter, but the pupils were distorted as though from some pressure on the brain, and she strove to articulate in vain. Blanche, in an agony of fear, rushed to the bell-rope, and brought Gingham and Charlie running up hardly less alarmed than herself. What could the lad do in a case like this? With the impetuosity of his character, he took his hat and hastened to Dr. Globus’s house with such speed as to overtake the messenger he had previously despatched; Gingham was sent down to hunt up a prescription of that skilful physician, which had once before been beneficial; and Blanche sat her down in her mother’s room, to watch, and tremble, and pray for the beloved form, stretched senseless within those white curtains. She could scarce believe it. In that very room, not six hours ago, she had pinned her mother’s shawl, and smoothed her own ringlets. Yet it seemed as if this had occurred to some one else--not to herself. With the unaccountable propensity great excitement ever has for trifling, she arranged the disordered toilet-table; she even counted the curl-papers that lay in their little triangular box; then she went down on her knees, and prayed, as those pray who feel it is the last resource. When she rose, a passion of weeping somewhat relieved her feelings, but with composure came the consciousness of the awful possibility--the separation that might be--to-night, even; and the dim, blank future, desolate, without a mother. But the familiar noises in the street brought her back to the present, and it seemed impossible that this should be the same world in which till now she had scarcely known any anxiety or affliction. Then a soothing hope stole over her that these dreadful misgivings might be groundless; that the doctor would come, and mamma would soon be better; and she would nurse her, and love her more and more, and never be wilful again; but in the midst, with a pang that almost stopped her heart, flashed across her the recollection of her father’s death--the suspense, the confusion, the sickening certainty, the dreary funeral, and how, in her little black frock, she had clasped mamma’s neck, and thought she had saved all, since she had not lost her. And now, must this come again? And would there be no mother to clasp when it was over? Blanche groaned aloud. But hark! the door-bell rings, there is a steady footstep on the stair, and she feels a deep sensation of relief, as though the doctor held the scales of life and death in his hands.