It was past eleven o'clock. The two domestics had retired, and Mrs. Wilkinson was alone with her sick child. Ella's moan of suffering came on her ear the instant she re-entered the room, and she stepped quickly to the crib, and bent over to look into its face. The cheeks of the child were flushed with fever to a bright crimson, and she was moving her head from side to side, and working her lips as if there was something in her mouth. Slight twitching motions of the arms and hands were also noticed by the mother. Her eyes were partly open. "Will Ella have a drink of water?" said Mrs. Wilkinson, placing her hand under the child's head, and slightly raising it from the pillow. But Ella did not seem to hear. "Say--love, will you have some water?" There was no sign that her words reached the child's ears. A deeper shade of trouble than that which already rested on the mother's face glanced over it. "Ella! Ella!" Mrs. Wilkinson slightly shook the child. The only response was the muttering of some incoherent words, and a continued moaning as if pain were disturbing her sleep. The mother now bent low over her child, and eagerly marked the expression of her face and the character of her breathing. Then she laid a hand upon her cheek. Instantly it was withdrawn with a quick start, but as quickly replaced again. "What a burning fever!" she murmured. Then she added, in a tone of anxiety, "How strangely she works her mouth! I don't like this constant rolling of her head. What can it mean? Ella! Ella!" And she shook the child again. "Want some water, love?" The mother's voice did not appear to reach the locked sense of hearing. Mrs. Wilkinson now lifted a glass of water from the bureau near by, and raising the head of Ella with one hand, applied, with the other, the water to her lips. About a table-spoonful was poured into her mouth. It was not swallowed, but ran out upon the pillow. "Mercy! mercy! what can ail the child!" exclaimed Mrs. Wilkinson, a look of fear coming into her face. A little while she stood over her, and then leaving her place beside the crib, she hurried out into the passage, and, pausing at the bottom of the stairs leading to the room above, called several times-- "Anna! Anna! Anna!" But no answer came. The domestic thus summoned had fallen into her first sound sleep, and the voice did not penetrate her ears. "Anna!" once more called Mrs. Wilkinson. There was no response, but the reverberation of her own voice returned upon the oppressive silence. She now hurried back to her sick child, whose low, troubled moaning had not been hushed for a moment. There was no apparent change. Ella lay with her half-opened eyes, showing, by the white line, that the balls were turned up unnaturally; with her crimsoned cheeks, and with the nervous motions of her lips and slight twitchings of her hands, at first noticed with anxiety and alarm.