something unusual in the way the child
cried out: as it was I didn't turn round till Mary screamed 'Joe!
Joe!' You know how a woman cries out when her child is in danger or
dying--short, and sharp, and terrible. 'Joe! Look! look! Oh, my God! our
child! Get the bath, quick! quick! it's convulsions!'

Jim was bent back like a bow, stiff as a bullock-yoke, in his mother's
arms, and his eyeballs were turned up and fixed--a thing I saw twice
afterwards, and don't want ever to see again.

I was falling over things getting the tub and the hot water, when the
woman who lived next door rushed in. She called to her husband to run
for the doctor, and before the doctor came she and Mary had got Jim into
a hot bath and pulled him through.

The neighbour woman made me up a shake-down in another room, and stayed
with Mary that night; but it was a long while before I got Jim and
Mary's screams out of my head and fell asleep.

You may depend I kept the fire in, and a bucket of water hot over it,
for a good many nights after that; but (it always happens like this)
there came a night, when the fright had worn off, when I was too tired
to bother about the fire, and that night Jim took us by surprise. Our
wood-heap was done, and I broke up a new chair to get a fire, and had
to run a quarter of a mile for water; but this turn wasn't so bad as the
first, and we pulled him through.

You never saw a child in convulsions? Well, you don't want to. It must
be only a matter of seconds, but it seems long minutes; and half an
hour afterwards the child might be laughing and playing with you,
or stretched out dead. It shook me up a lot. I was always pretty
high-strung and sensitive. After Jim took the first fit, every time he
cried, or turned over, or stretched out in the night, I'd jump: I was
always feeling his forehead in the dark to see if he was feverish, or
feeling his limbs to see if he was 'limp' yet. Mary and I often laughed
about it--afterwards. I tried sleeping in another room, but for nights
after Jim's first attack I'd be just dozing off into a sound sleep,
when I'd hear him scream, as plain as could be, and I'd hear Mary cry,
'Joe!--Joe!'--short, sharp, and terrible--and I'd be up and into their
room like a shot, only to find them sleeping peacefully. Then I'd feel
Jim's head and his breathing for signs of convulsions, see to the fire
and water, and go back to bed and try to sleep. For the first few nights
I was like that all night,