n at once for Doctor Fraser. Harry is quite sick," said
Virginia, pale to the lips.

"But I won't see him, mamma, and I won't take his medicines. They are
the meanest medicines."

"Perhaps he won't give you any, precious, and if he does, mamma will
taste every single one for you."

Then Jenny began to beg to get up, and Lucy, who had been watching with
dispassionate curiosity from the edge of her little bed, was sent to
amuse her until Marthy's return.

"Suppose I had gone!" thought Virginia, while an overwhelming
thankfulness swept the anxiety out of her mind. Not until the servant
reappeared, dragging the fat old doctor after her, did Virginia remember
that she was still barefooted, and go into her bedroom to search for her
slippers.

"You don't think he is seriously sick, do you, doctor? Is there any
need to be alarmed?" she asked, and her voice entreated him to allay her
anxiety.

The doctor, a benevolent soul in a body which had run to fat from lack
of exercise, was engaged in holding Harry's tongue down with a silver
spoon, while, in spite of the child's furious protests, he leisurely
examined his throat. When the operation was over, and Harry, crying,
choking, and kicking, rolled into Virginia's arms, she put the question
again, vaguely rebelling against the gravity in the kind old face which
was turned half away from her:

"There's nothing really the matter, is there, doctor?"

He turned to her, and laid a caressing, if heavy, hand on her shoulder,
which shook suddenly under the thin folds of her dressing-gown. After
forty years in which he had watched suffering and death, he preserved
still his native repugnance to contact with any side of life that did
not have a comfortable feeling to it.

"Oh, we'll get him all right soon, with some good nursing," he said
gently, "but I think we're going to have a bit of an illness on our
hands."

"But not serious, doctor? It isn't anything serious?"

She felt suddenly so weak that she could hardly stand, and instinctively
she reached out to grasp the large, protecting arm of the physician.
Even then his bland professional smile, which had in it something of the
serene detachment of the everlasting purpose of which it was a part, did
not fade, hardly changed even, on his features.

"Well, I think we'd better get the other children away. It might be
serious if they all had it on our hands."

"Had it? Had what? Oh, doctor--not--diphtheria?"

She brought out