"Well, you see, sickness is not like anything else--it's got to come first. It's not an hour since she was sent for, and there was no way of getting a message to you. She told me to give you her love, and say how sorry she was." "Will she be long, do you think?" "I couldn't say; but she took her nightgown with her." "Oh! Then I may as well go home at once. And when she wants me again, she can send me word." I was inclined to be annoyed with Emily for running me about for nothing, but--providentially--it occurred to me to inquire what her errand was. "It's the child," said Mrs. Blount, "that's not very well." "What child?" "The little Juke baby. He has only a cold, his mother thinks, but, as the doctor is away just now, she's nervous about him. So she sent for Emily." "For _Emily!_" My heart swelled. I cannot describe the feeling that came over me. Mrs. Blount stared at me in an odd way, and I have no doubt had cause to do so; I must have stared at her like a daft creature. Neither of us spoke another word. I just turned and ran out of the house, ran all the way to the tram road, ran after a tram that had already passed the end of the street, and in a quarter of an hour was jumping from the dummy of another opposite my darling daughter's door. No doubt my fellow travellers smiled to see a matron of my years conducting herself in that manner, but I cast dignity to the winds. A new maid who did not know me answered my sharp pull at the house bell, and told me Mrs. Juke was not at home to visitors. "How is the baby?" I gasped out, trembling in every limb. "We have just sent for Dr. Errington," she replied. And then I rushed past her and upstairs to Phyllis's room. As soon as I opened the door, and heard the sound in the air, I recognised croup. It reminded me of times, in years gone by, when I had wakened in the night and wondered for a moment what the extraordinary noise was that pulsed through the house like the snoring of a wild animal, and then leaped from my bed in agony as if a sword had gone through me. I could see my own child's face, swollen and dark with threatened suffocation, looking to her mother for help with those beseeching eyes: just in the same way they looked at me now, only now the mother-anguish was wringing _her_ poor heart. She was walking up and down the floor distractedly, with the baby in her arms--he had grown a huge fellow, and weighed her down; and Emily was wildly turning the leaves of a great medical book of Edmund's, blind with tears. Dear, loving, futile creatures! It was more than I could bear to see them, and to hear my Phyllis cry, "Mother! Mother! Oh, mother, tell us what to do!"