“That will be as the doctor wishes, I reckon,” answered the nurse, in her worst mood, for she was greatly disturbed. “It isn’t that young fellow, let me tell you—this is one who won’t listen to no nonsense, if he thinks it isn’t good for you or the young one; you won’t get leave to keep him now, I tell you.” “But it is good for me, I am sure of that, and this poor little baby, too; see how sweetly it sleeps.” Jane Kelly gave a sidelong look at the child, muttered something about the ridiculousness of setting children to take care of children, and flung herself away from the bed. Directly, Jane went again to the cot on which Mary Margaret Dillon was sleeping, what might prove the sleep of death. Seizing the woman by both shoulders, she half lifted her from the bed, and shook her vigorously. Putting her mouth down to the sealed ear, she shouted forth a fierce oath that aroused every patient in the ward, but had no effect upon the sleeper. Jane Kelly was terribly frightened. It might not be long before the doctor would come in, for some of the patients were in great danger, and he usually visited such very early in the morning. If he found Mrs. Dillon still insensible, and so deathly white, an explanation would be demanded, and Jane Kelly trembled to think of the result. This apprehension made the nurse desperate. All her efforts had failed to reach the sealed senses of the woman whose sleep threatened to be eternal. As a last resort, she snatched up the child, and shook it till its teeth would have chattered had such appendages been yet given to its mouth; as it was, the little fellow set up a yell that would have done credit to the wildest pappoose of the wildest Indian that ever lived—a yell that reached the locked brain of the woman, and set the warm motherly blood to beating in her heart. The deathly look went out from Mary Margaret’s face. The lips began to stir; her heavy eyelids were slowly lifted; she turned over on her side, muttering,— “Was it the mother’s darlint?” I think Jane Kelly must have pinched young Ireland directly after this, for he set up another war-whoop, and this time Mary Margaret started up in her bed and began to feel blindly around for the child, muttering to herself, and rocking to and fro; a moment after, she fell upon her side, and sunk into a sound sleep again, from which all the efforts of the nurse could not arouse her. In less than an hour, the doctor did, in fact, come into the ward, in order to visit one or two patients who required constant attention. It would have been easy enough for Jane Kelly to have concealed the condition of Mrs. Dillon; but young Ireland happened to choose that moment for a new outbreak. He was getting hungry and did not like the state of things in his neighborhood at all, and there was no way of appeasing him short of absolute choking, a process Jane Kelly longed to put in force, but dared not.