e passed her sneering:

"A precious superior lot you lady-nurses think yourselves, I dare say.
I'd sooner have one old gamp than the whole boiling of you!"

Marcella eyed him sternly, her nostrils tightening. "Will you go?" she
said.

He gave her a furious glance, and plunged down the stairs outside,
breathing threats.

Marcella put her hand to her head a moment, and drew a long breath.
There was a certain piteousness in the action, a consciousness of youth
and strain.

Then she saw that the landing and the stairs above were beginning to
fill with dark-haired Jewesses, eagerly peering and talking. In another
minute or two she would be besieged by them. She called sharply,
"Benny!"

Instantly Benny appeared from the landing above, elbowing the Jewesses
to right and left.

"What is it you want, Nuss? No, she don't want none o' _you_--_there_!"

And Benjamin darted into the room, and would have slammed the door in
all their faces, but that Marcella said to him--

"Let in Mrs. Levi, please."

The kind neighbour, who had been taking care of the children, was
admitted, and then the key was turned. Marcella scribbled a line on a
half-sheet of paper, and, with careful directions, despatched Benny with
it.

"I have sent for a new doctor," she explained, still frowning and white,
to Mrs. Levi. "That one was not fit."

The woman's olive-skinned face lightened all over. "Thanks to the Lord!"
she said, throwing up her hands. "But how in the world did you do 't,
miss? There isn't a single soul in this house that doesn't go all of a
tremble at the sight of 'im. Yet all the women has 'im when they're
ill--bound to. They thinks he must be clever, 'cos he's such a brute. I
do believe sometimes it's that. He _is_ a brute!"

Marcella was bending over her patient, trying so far as she could to set
her straight and comfortable again. But the woman had begun to mutter
once more words in a strange dialect that Marcella did not understand,
and could no longer be kept still. The temperature was rising again, and
another fit of delirium was imminent. Marcella could only hope that she
and Mrs. Levi between them would be able to hold her till the doctor
came. When she had done all that was in her power, she sat beside the
poor tossing creature, controlling and calming her as best she could,
while Mrs. Levi poured into her shrinking ear the story of the woman's
illness and of Dr. Blank's conduct of it. Marcella's feeling, as she
li