Dr Brewer began to be more interested than was at all justifiable in what was after all only one case out of a hundred. “Poor children! poor children!” he said. They stood with their faces intent upon him, four great brown eyes, with the eyelids curved and puckered over them in deep arches of anxiety and terror, appealing as if to a god who could kill and make alive. He was overcome by this passionate trouble and suspense. He put out his hand (he had children of his own) and touched lightly with a soothing touch the nearest shoulder. “You must not be frightened,” he said. “I see you are brave girls; you will do your duty. No; if she is so far away as that, we will not frighten your mother to-day--not to-day.” “You think he is very ill?” they said, searching his face as if it were full of secret folds and hieroglyphics which searching could find out. “He has a sharp attack. Come, one of you shall go, one at a time, and be at hand if anything is wanted. I sent him a nurse last night, whom I happened to be able to lay my hand upon. She will want a rest occasionally. If you will obey orders exactly, and call her whenever you are at a loss--one at a time.” “Milly is not strong--not so very strong,” cried Grace; “let it be me. I nursed them all when we had scarlet fever: and I never cry nor break down.” “Oh, Grace! I should not cry if I were with papa,” cried Milly, with streaming eyes. Dr Brewer almost cried too. He was tender-hearted, as so many doctors are, and then he had girls of his own. But he could not spend all his morning with these two pretty forlorn creatures, and their father, who was struggling for his life. This went on for more than a week, during which there was to these poor girls neither night nor day, but all one confused languor and excitement and anxiety; the monotony of the sick-room, broken only by now and then a terrified consultation with nurse and doctor, or between themselves, as to what was to be done. During all this time they defended their mother from the telegram with which the doctor had threatened her. The more they thought of it the more impossible it seemed that she should be summoned upon such a journey at a moment’s notice and kept, during all its course, in the terrible anxiety which was inevitable if once she knew what was hanging over them. After the first days Dr Brewer himself did not urge it. He said to himself that all would be settled one way or other before the poor woman could come: and that the girls, poor things! must bear it as they could if matters came to the worst.