r mother.

"Don't let her hear anything, It will kill her," he said, and ran up the
stairs. Almost immediately he was down again, searching for alcohol;
he found a small quantity and poured that down the swollen throat. He
roused Dan then, and sent him running madly for Doctor Smalley, with
a warning to bring him past Mrs. Boyd's door quietly, and to bring an
intubation set with him in case her throat should close. Then, on one of
his innumerable journeys up and down the stairs he encountered Mrs. Boyd
herself, in her nightgown, and terrified.

"What's the matter, Willy?" she asked. "Is it a fire?"

"Edith is sick. I don't want you to go up. It may be contagious. It's
her throat."

And from that Mrs. Boyd deduced diphtheria; she sat on the stairs in her
nightgown, a shaken helpless figure, asking countless questions of those
that hurried past. But they reassured her, and after a time she went
downstairs and made a pot of coffee. Ensconced with it in the lower
hall, and milk bottle in hand, she waylaid them with it as they hurried
up and down.

Upstairs the battle went on. There were times when the paralyzed muscles
almost stopped lifting the chest walls, when each breath was a new
miracle. Her throat was closing fast, too, and at eight o'clock came a
brisk young surgeon, and with Willy Cameron's assistance, an operation
was performed. After that, and for days, Edith breathed through a tube
in her neck.

The fiction of diphtheria was kept up, and Mrs. Boyd, having a childlike
faith in medical men, betrayed no anxiety after the first hour or two.
She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while
she herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay, conscious
now but sullen, disfigured, silent. She was happy, too, to have her
old domain hers again, while Ellen nursed; to make again her flavorless
desserts, her mounds of rubberlike gelatine, her pies. She brewed broths
daily, and when Edith could swallow she sent up the results of hours of
cooking which Ellen cooled, skimmed the crust of grease from the top,
and heated again over the gas flame.

She never guessed the conspiracy against her.

Between Ellen and Edith there was no real liking. Ellen did her duty,
and more; got up at night; was gentle with rather heavy hands; bathed
the girl and brushed and braided her long hair. But there were hours
during that simulated quarantine when a brooding silence held in the
sick-room, and when E