The doctor was quick-witted and sympathetic; but naturally he thought of his patient as a case, and not as a man. “Not to allow him to catch cold! that’s easier said than done,” he said with a half-smile, shaking his head. “I thought there must be delicacy of the chest to begin with; all that could not have been done in one day.” “No, no, there was no delicacy; he was always well and strong--always strong,” the girls cried, emulating and supplementing each other. They poured upon him instantly a hundred examples of their father’s robustness. He had never been ill in his life, except with a cold, and everybody has colds. He never took any special care. Mamma was anxious, but then mamma was always anxious about us all, though we are known to be the healthiest family! To all these eager explanations Doctor Brewer listened with that half-smile, shaking his head; but he was interested. From looking at this matter as only a case, he began to realise the human creatures involved in it, and to perceive that the man who was ill was the head of an anxious, probably dependent family, and that these two pale, frightened, eager girls, with their young beauty all obscured by this cloud of pale terror and confusion, were his children. He began to look at them with a certain tenderness of pity. “You are very young,” he said at last, when they gave him time to speak. “I think you had better telegraph at once for your mother.” “For mamma?” their faces were pale before, but this suggestion withdrew from them every tinge of colour. “She is the best nurse he can have; she ought to be here to take care of you in any case. Give me her address, and I will telegraph. She ought to know at once.” “Doctor!” said Grace, separating herself from her sister, “oh, let _us_ know at once. Is it so serious? is it dangerous? I am not very young, and I am the eldest, and have had a great deal of experience. Mamma could not be here for nearly a fortnight; and think what a thing it would be, the long voyage alone, and the fear of what she might find when she came, and no news--no news for ten days or more--for she might not have so good a passage as we had. And then she has never been used to travel, or do anything by herself. Oh, doctor, do you think--do you think that it is so serious as that?” “Where is your mother?” he said. “In Canada,” they both cried in one breath.