telephone was
close at hand, and it was quite possible that Dr. Street had rung her up
to ask for news.

But it was the agency that had called, and Miss Douglass informed her
that a telegram had arrived there for her a few moments before. Should
she hold it or send it to her by Rownie? Lloyd reflected a moment.

"Oh--open it and read it to me," she said. "It's a call, isn't
it?--or--no; send it here by Rownie, and send my hospital slippers with
her, the ones without heels. But don't ring up again to-night; we're
expecting a crisis almost any moment."

Lloyd returned to the sick-room, sent away the servant, and once more
settled herself for the night. Hattie had roused for a moment.

"Am I going to get well, am I going to get well, Miss Searight?"

Lloyd put her finger to her lips, nodding her head, and Hattie closed
her eyes again with a long breath. A certain great tenderness and
compassion for the little girl grew big in Lloyd's heart. To herself she
said:

"God helping me, you shall get well. They believe in me, these
people--'If any one could pull us through it would be Miss Searight.' We
will 'pull through,' yes, for I'll do it."

The night closed down, dark and still and very hot. Lloyd, regulating
the sick-room's ventilation, opened one of the windows from the top. The
noises of the City steadily decreasing as the hours passed, reached her
ears in a subdued, droning murmur. On her bed, that had for so long been
her bed of pain, Hattie lay with closed eyes, inert, motionless, hardly
seeming to breathe, her life in the balance; unhappy little invalid,
wasted with suffering, with drawn, pinched face and bloodless lips, and
at her side Lloyd, her dull-blue eyes never leaving her patient's face,
alert and vigilant, despite her long wakefulness, her great bronze-red
flame of hair rolling from her forehead and temples, the sombre glow in
her cheeks no whit diminished by her day of fatigue, of responsibility
and untiring activity.

For the time being she could thrust her fear, the relentless Enemy that
for so long had hung upon her heels, back and away from her. There was
another Enemy now to fight--or was it another--was it not the same
Enemy, the very same, whose shadow loomed across that sick-bed, across
the frail, small body and pale, drawn face?

With her pity and compassion for the sick child there arose in Lloyd a
certain unreasoned, intuitive obstinacy, a banding together of all her
powers and facultie