t in any way violating her promise, she might chance to
catch a brief glimpse of the man she loved.

"Yes, I will come in for a minute," she answered and followed Mrs. Smith
into the room.

On a cheap cane couch in the corner, at the foot of which the child,
Tottie, was playing with a doll, lay the baby, an infant of nearly
three. The convulsive fit had passed away and she was sitting up
supported by a pillow, the fair hair hanging about her flushed face, and
beating the blanket with her little fevered hands.

"Take me, mummy, take me, I thirsty," she moaned.

"There, that's how she goes on all day and it fairly breaks my heart to
see her," said the mother, wiping away a tear with her apron. "If you'll
be so kind as to mind her a minute, miss, I'll go and make a little
lemonade. I've got a couple of oranges left, and she seems to like them
best of anything."

Jane's heart was stirred, and, leaning down, she took the child in her
arms. "Go and get the drink," she said, "I will look after her till you
come," and she began to walk up and down the room rocking the little
sufferer to and fro.

Presently she looked up to see Dr. Merchison standing in the doorway.

"Jane, you here!" he said.

"Yes, Ernest."

He stepped towards her, and, before she could turn away or remonstrate,
bent down and kissed her on the lips.

"You shouldn't do that, dear," she said, "it's out of the bargain."

"Perhaps I shouldn't," he answered, "but I couldn't help it. I said that
I would keep clear of you, and if I have met you by accident it is not
my fault. Come, let me have a look at that child."

Taking the little girl upon his knee, he began to examine her, feeling
her pulse and looking at her tongue. For a while he seemed puzzled, then
Jane saw him take a little magnifying glass from his pocket and by the
help of it search the skin of the patient's forehead, especially just at
the roots of the hair. After this he looked at the neck and wrists, then
set the child down on the couch, waving Jane back when she advanced to
take it, and asked the mother, who had just entered the room with the
lemonade, two or three short, quick questions.

Next he turned to Jane and said--

"I don't want to frighten you, but you will be as well out of this. It's
lucky for you," he added with a little smile, "that when you were born
it wasn't the fashion for doctors to be anti-vaccinationists, for,
unless I am much mistaken, that child has got smallpo