Are you suffering, precious?"

"I don't know."

"There, let us warm your feet. Don't take them away, pet. See, you
breathe easily now."

"Thank God!" says the man "that we are all doctors."

The afternoon wanes.

"Georgie Day, mamma."

"Yes, lamby."

"I want him to have my sleeve-buttons. He can play base-ball, not
two-old-cat. He can play real base-ball."

"Yes, Georgie shall come to see you to-morrow."

Lockwin goes to the speaking tube.

"Go and get Dr. Floddin at once. Tell him to come and stay with us.
Tell him we have difficulty in keeping the child warm."

The sun has poured into the window and gone on to other sick chambers.
The flaxseed and stramonium seem like reminders of the past stage of
the trouble. Richard Tarbelle, never before in a room where the tide
of life was low, looks down on Davy.

"Mr. Lockwin, I'm not rich, but I'd give a thousand dollars--a thousand
dollars!"

"My God, doctor! why have you been so slow getting here?"

"My horses have been taken sick as fast as I got them."

The doctor advances to the child. The child is smiling on Richard
Tarbelle.

"What ails you?"

It is Lockwin, looking in scorn on his doctor, who now, pale as a
ghost, throws his hands up and down silly as the crone downstairs by
the kitchen-range.

"Nothing can be done! Nothing can be done!"

"They say it hasn't been asthma at all," sobs Esther. "I suppose it's
diphtheria."

"The man who can't tell when a child is sick, can't tell when he's
dying," sneers Lockwin. "Doctor, when were you here yesterday?"

"I haven't been here since to-morrow week. My horses have been sick
and the child was well."

Davy is white as marble. His breath comes hard. But why he should be
dying, and why this fifty-cent doctor should know that much, puzzles
and dumfounds the father. Davy may die next week, perhaps. Not dying
now!

"It's a lie. It's not so," the father says.

"Mr. Lockwin, I don't want to say it, but it is so." It is the kind
voice of Richard Tarbelle.

"Very well, then. It is diphtheria." It is the one goblin that for
years has appalled Lockwin. Well it might, when it steals on a man
like this. "To think I never gave him a drop of whisky. Oh! God! Get
us a surgeon."

A medical college is not far away. The surgeon comes quickly, although
Lockwin has gone half-way to meet him. The two men arrive. Dr.
Floddin continues to throw his hands up and down. He loved Davy.
Perha