The boy did not wait to be sent, but snatched up his cap and darted off. His sister ran upstairs.
The baby was still lying quietly on Mrs. Kayll’s lap--not flushed now, but extremely pale. Madge drew near and spoke to him; but though he opened his eyes he did not seem to see her, but gazed out with a curious blank stare.
“Oh, mother!” cried Madge, clasping her hands, “I don’t believe he knows me. Baby, it’s Madge. Baby!”
Mrs. Kayll’s forehead wrinkled itself into upright lines.
“It’s very strange,” she said slowly. “I am getting rather frightened, though I thought at first this morning that he was better.--No, go away, dears,” for Edie and Bessie were peering in at the door. “I am going to keep him very quiet for the present.”
“Mayn’t we come and kiss him, mother?” asked Bessie imploringly.
“Not yet. Not till the doctor has seen him.”
The little girls went unwillingly back to their work, and Madge knelt on the floor by her mother, still trying to attract the little one’s notice, but in vain.
“Do you think it’s some illness--something catching?”
“I can’t tell, dear. It doesn’t look like it.”
They were silent, listening anxiously for Jem’s return.
“You see, Madge, he won’t eat, and he can’t go on like that. He has hardly swallowed any food since the day before yesterday.”
Before long Jem came flying back, scarlet with running, panting, and out of breath.
“Doctor will come as soon as he can,” he told them--“most likely in an hour or so. Can I do anything, mother?”
“Nothing,” she answered, scarcely taking her eyes from the pallid little face. “Nothing but keep quiet, and get the others to be quiet too.”
Very still the house was for the two hours before the arrival of the doctor, for whom all were so anxiously looking. And all the while the baby lay in that listless state, recognizing nobody. The children spoke in hushed voices, and whispered to each other that they wondered what father would say if he knew, and that they did wish he were at home. For the household pet had scarcely had a day’s illness, and had seldom been even what the nurses call “fractious.”
At last. The doctor had come. He was a thin clever-looking young man, who seemed as though he had known all of them since they were born, and who touched Bessie’s soft hair as he passed her on the staircase, and clapped Jem on the shoulder when he let him in.