'Nay, nay, father!' And her face actually smiled. This supremacy of the soul against years of continued misfortune lifted her high above him, and he suddenly felt himself an inferior creature. 'I'll go for th' doctor,' he said. 'Nay! I shall need ye.' And she put her head out of the window. 'Mrs. Walley, will ye let your Lucy run quick for th' club doctor? my Tommy's hurt.' The whole street awoke instantly from its nap, and in a few moments every door was occupied. Miriam closed her own door softly, as though she might wake the boy, and spoke in whispers to people through the window, finally telling them to go away. When the doctor came, half an hour afterwards, she had done all that she knew for Tommy, without the slightest apparent result. 'What is it?' asked the doctor curtly, as he lifted the child's thin and lifeless hand. Eli Machin explained that he had boxed the boy's ear. 'Tommy was impudent to his grandfather,' Miriam added hastily. 'Which ear?' the doctor inquired. It was the left. He gazed into it, and then raised the boy's right leg and arm. 'There is no paralysis,' he said. Then he felt the heart, and then took out his stethoscope and applied it, listening intently. 'Canst hear owt?' the old man said. 'I cannot,' he answered. 'Don't say that, doctor--don't say that! said Miriam, with an accent of appeal. 'In these cases it is almost impossible to tell whether the patient is alive or dead. We must wait. Mrs. Baddeley, make a mustard plaster for his feet, and we will put another over the heart.' And so they waited one hour, while the clock ticked and the mustard plasters gradually cooled. Then Tommy's lips parted. After another half-hour the doctor said: 'I must go now; I will come again at six. Do nothing but apply fresh plasters. Be sure to keep his neck free. He is breathing, but I may as well be plain with you--there is a great risk of your child dying in this condition.' Neighbours were again at the window, and Miriam drew the blind, waving them away. At six o'clock the doctor reappeared. 'There is no change,' he remarked. 'I will call in before I go to bed.' When he lifted the latch for the third time, at ten o'clock, Eli Machin and Miriam still sat by the sofa, and Tommy still lay thereon, moveless, a terrible enigma. But the glass lamp was lighted on the mantelpiece, and Miriam's sewing, by which she earned a livelihood, had been hidden out of sight. 'There is no change,' said the doctor. 'You can do nothing except hope.' 'And pray,' the calm mother added. Eli neither stirred nor spoke. For nine hours he had absolutely forgotten his engine. He knew the boy would die. The clock struck eleven, twelve, one, two, three, each time fretting the nerves of the old man like a rasp. It was the hour of summer dawn. A cold gray light fell unkindly across the small figure on the sofa. 'Open th' door a bit, father,' said Miriam. 'This parlour's gettin' close; th' lad canna breathe.'