In one moment my cloak was on the floor and the babe was in my arms. He struggled to cry, but could not get the sound out--only the brazen crow, and harsh, strangled breath, which, I was informed, were symptoms of a crisis which had only just appeared, attacking him in his sleep--and Phyllis, when she had given him to me, clasped and unclasped her hands, wrung them, and moaned as if some one were killing her. "Ipecacuanha wine!" I shouted. "Run Emily! Run over to the chemist's and get it fresh--it must be fresh--and don't lose an instant! Hot water, Phyllis, and a sponge! And tell them to get a bath ready!" They scurried away, and Emily, hatless and panting, was back from the chemist's on the other side of the street before I had finished loosening the infant's clothes; and he nearly choked himself with the first spoonful of the stuff, which nevertheless I was obliged to make him swallow. "He can't! He can't!" Phyllis moaned, tears that she forgot to wipe away running down her poor face like rain down a window-pane. "Oh, he's choking! He's going into convulsions! He's dying! Oh, Ted, Ted! Oh, my precious angel! Oh, what shall I do!" I calmly gave him another spoonful of the ipecacuanha wine, for I knew what I knew--that in ten minutes all this grief would subside with the sufferings of the poor child--and almost immediately the expected results occurred. It was an agitating moment for her, still imagining convulsions and the throes of dissolution, and an anxious one for me, because this was a much younger victim to croup than any I had had to deal with; but when the paroxysm passed it was evident to everybody--and the servants also were standing round--that his distress was already soothed and the tension of the attack relieved. I put him gently into the warm bath, heating it gradually till he might almost have been scalded without knowing it, fomenting the little throat with a soft sponge; and when I took him out and rolled him in a warm blanket, he sank at once to sleep in my arms, and the crisis and the danger were over. Then in dashed Dr. Errington, desperately alarmed because he was so late, and full of suspicious questions. Phyllis took him aside and explained everything, and, although it was hard to convince him that the right thing had been done, eventually he was convinced, and owned it. "I congratulate you, Mrs. Braye, on your presence of mind," he said handsomely. "It it not at all unlikely, from what Mrs. Juke tells me, that the prompt measures you took averted a serious attack." "Thank you, doctor," I replied with a modest smile. "I am glad to prove to you that I am of some use in a sick-room." He looked a little embarrassed--as well he might--and Emily flushed up. It was her habit to blush at anything and nothing, like a half-grown school girl. But Phyllis spoke out bravely.