The nearest doctor, who occupies a ground-floor apartment below, a brute of a man of thirty-five or so, elected, when he came up, to look wise and inscrutable. Calm and grave, he prescribed oil and with a murmured, "We shall see in the morning" he left me in an agony of doubt and anxiety. The only person who exhibited any degree of calm was Alicia. And though she is still a child herself I confess to a feeling of resentment against what seemed to me callousness in the face of our perturbation. I saw visions of any number of diseases, of being quarantined, of Jimmie’s possible death, of my bearing forevermore a feeling of nameless guilt before Laura’s memory. I told them I should sit up the night. "Oh, no, Mr. Byrd," insisted the girl with sudden vehemence. "Don’t do that. I’ll make up a place in the dining room and leave the door of their room open. I’ll hear him if he wakes." "I’m afraid, Alicia, you don’t take this seriously enough," I told her sternly. She looked at me wistfully for a moment and then faintly smiled. "Yes, sir, I do," she answered. "But it’s no use our all wearing ourselves out at once if it’s real sickness. But I don’t think it’s anything much." "How can you know?" I demanded suspiciously. "I just think so," she asserted. "At the Home children were always coming down like this. The next day they were as well as ever again." "But this is not the Home," I retorted severely. The girl flushed. I saw I had hurt her. "But he’s a child," she insisted doggedly, in a low voice. I shook my head. "I shall sit up in the study," I told her, "with the door open. I shall hear him if he calls. You’d better go to bed." Her great haunting eyes looked at me for an instant and she left me. In the study I lighted a fire, drew up the large chair, lighted a cigarette and in dressing gown and slippers composed myself for the night, determined to spend it waking. In my mind were revolving many things. Fred Salmon’s absurd proposal, the strange trick of circumstances that had suddenly made me responsible for a houseful of children, the whereabouts of Dibdin, the amazing multiplicity of bills, the little lad’s burning fever. Drowsiness began to assault my eyelids before the glowing fire. To combat it, I took down that sonata in words, Conrad’s "The Nigger of the Narcissus", and reread the description of the Cape storm, which is not a description so much as the expression of the storm itself. As always in reading that book, I was overawed to the point of pain by what language can do. And pondering upon that, I allowed myself to doze off for a few seconds. Suddenly I awoke with a tremor and looked at my watch. To my amazement it was half-past six in the morning. Abjectly guilty, I stole out and tiptoed into the dining room. The light was burning. I saw three chairs with a crumpled pillow upon them and Alicia, smiling drowsily, was gliding out of the children’s room.