her efforts proving fruitless, lifting the innocent sufferer in her arms, she bore her into their common sleeping-room, laid her upon her own couch, and sitting beside her watched in silence the progress of each alarming symptom; the involuntary chill, quick breathing, and scarlet flush, gradually predominating over the healthful hues of blooming infancy.
After an interval thus passed, Mrs. De Brooke returned to her husband, urging the necessity of the immediate attendance of a physician.
"My dear", returned he, "your affection for the child leads you to magnify her illness. God forbid I should oppose you in a feeling so just as that by which you are influenced,—love to your off-spring; but, supposing even that she is under the influence of fever, it may be but temporary."
He paused to reflect awhile; in calling for medical aid, physician's fees, a long apothecary's bill, would be the natural and unavoidable result; the extent he dreaded, deprived as he was of every resource. Severe were the pangs which probed him upon perceiving his wife anxiously attending his decision.
"Let us wait until tomorrow", he continued; "drugs to a creature so young cannot but be per-
