I will help ye home, then.'

'No, no!' she said, in the same gasping way; 'I will sit down here a
few minutes. I shall be all right. I--I am quite well----'

'Ye are not going to sit down on a doorstep on a night like this,' he
said, severely. 'Come, pull yourself together, my lass. If it is
number twelve, you have only a few yards.'

He half-dragged and half-carried her along. He knocked loudly at the
door. There came to it a tall, black-a-vised woman, who, the moment
she saw the girl, cried out--

'Oh, Mary Ann, are you took bad again?'

'No--don't tell them,' the girl said, as she staggered into the narrow
passage. 'They'll turn me off. They said so the last time. I shall
be all right. But my head--is so bad.'

They got her into the dingy little parlour, and laid her down on the
horse-hair covered couch. Her hand was clasped to her head, and her
whole frame was shivering violently, as if with cold.

John Douglas, living that recluse life up there in the north, had never
before had to deal directly with sickness, and he was terribly anxious
and alarmed. What was he to do? His first wild notion, observing the
violent shivering, was to order hot whisky-and-water; then he thought
it would be better to send for a doctor. But the tall, dark woman did
not seem inclined to go or send for any doctor. She stood regarding
the girl quite apathetically.

'Poor Mary Anne!' she said, watching her, as if she were a dog in a
fit. 'She wasn't took as bad as this before. She's been starving
herself, she has, to keep her mother and her young sisters; and she
can't stand all day in the shop as she used to. I've seen it a-coming
on.'

'God bless me, woman,' said Douglas, angrily, 'we must do something
instead of standing and looking at the poor lass. Cannot you tell me
where the nearest doctor is? Has one been attending her?'

'Poor Mary Ann,' the woman said, composedly; 'she'll come out of it;
but it's worse this time. A doctor? She couldn't afford to have a
doctor, she couldn't. A doctor would be bringing physic; she can't pay
for physic, she can't. She owes me three weeks' rent, and I ain't ast
for it once, not once. Thirteen hours a day standing behind a counter
is too much for a slip of a girl like that. Poor Mary Anne! Is your
head bad, my dear?'

Douglas made use of a phrase which is not to be found anywhere in the
writings of Marcus Aurelius, and hurriedly left the house. He made for
the