o keep her from the smallest accident.

Yet all this care could not keep out sickness. The very day that Grace
Hope began to cough and alarm her father, Mary Bartley flushed and paled,
and showed some signs of feverishness.

The older nurse, a vigilant person, told Mr. Bartley directly; and the
doctor was sent for post-haste. He felt her pulse, and said there was
some little fever, but no cause for anxiety. He administered syrup of
poppies, and little Mary passed a tranquil night.

Next day, about one in the afternoon, she became very restless, and was
repeatedly sick. The doctor was sent for, and combated the symptoms; but
did not inquire closely into the cause. Sickness proceeds immediately
from the stomach; so he soothed the stomach with alkaline mucilages, and
the sickness abated. But next day alarming symptoms accumulated, short
breathing, inability to eat, flushed face, wild eyes. Bartley telegraphed
to a first-rate London physician. He came, and immediately examined
the girl's throat, and shook his head; then he uttered a fatal
word--Diphtheria.

They had wasted four days squirting petty remedies at symptoms, instead
of finding the cause and attacking it, and now he told them plainly he
feared it was too late--the fatal membrane was forming, and, indeed, had
half closed the air-passages.

Bartley in his rage and despair would have driven the local doctor out of
the house, but this the London doctor would not allow. He even consulted
him on the situation, now it was declared, and, as often happens, they
went in for heroic remedies since it was too late.

But neither powerful stimulants nor biting draughts nor caustic
applications could hinder the deadly parchment from growing and growing.

The breath reduced to a thread, no nourishment possible except by baths
of beef tea, and similar enemas. Exhaustion inevitable. Death certain.

Such was the hopeless condition of the rich man's child, surrounded by
nurses and physicians, when the father of the poor man's child applied to
the clerk Bolton for that employment which meant bread for his child, and
perhaps life for _her_.

William Hope returned to his little Grace with a loaf of bread he
bought on the road with Bolton's shilling, and fresh milk in a
soda-water bottle.

He found her crying. She had contrived, after the manner of children, to
have an accident. The room was almost bare of furniture, but my lady had
found a wooden stool that _could_ be mounted