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greeted them, and a rush of hot, stale air, smelling of warming

flannels.

At three o’clock in the morning Dr. Archie was in the parlor putting on

his cuffs and coat—there was no spare bedroom in that house. Peter

Kronborg’s seventh child, a boy, was being soothed and cosseted by his

aunt, Mrs. Kronborg was asleep, and the doctor was going home. But he

wanted first to speak to Kronborg, who, coatless and fluttery, was

pouring coal into the kitchen stove. As the doctor crossed the

dining-room he paused and listened. From one of the wing rooms, off to

the left, he heard rapid, distressed breathing. He went to the kitchen

door.

“One of the children sick in there?” he asked, nodding toward the

partition.

Kronborg hung up the stove-lifter and dusted his fingers. “It must be

Thea. I meant to ask you to look at her. She has a croupy cold. But in

my excitement—Mrs. Kronborg is doing finely, eh, doctor? Not many of

your patients with such a constitution, I expect.”

“Oh, yes. She’s a fine mother.” The doctor took up the lamp from the

kitchen table and unceremoniously went into the wing room. Two chubby

little boys were asleep in a double bed, with the coverlids over their

noses and their feet drawn up. In a single bed, next to theirs, lay a

little girl of eleven, wide awake, two yellow braids sticking up on the

pillow behind her. Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing.

The doctor shut the door behind him. “Feel pretty sick, Thea?” he asked

as he took out his thermometer. “Why didn’t you call somebody?”

She looked at him with greedy affection. “I thought you were here,” she

spoke between quick breaths. “There is a new baby, isn’t there? Which?”

“Which?” repeated the doctor.

“Brother or sister?”

He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Brother,” he said,

taking her hand. “Open.”

“Good. Brothers are better,” she murmured as he put the glass tube under

her tongue.

“Now, be still, I want to count.” Dr. Archie reached for her hand and

took out his watch. When he put her hand back under the quilt he went

over to one of the windows—they were both tight shut—and lifted it a

little way. He reached up and ran his hand along the cold, unpapered

wall. “Keep under the covers; I’ll come back to you in a moment,” he

said, bending over the glass lamp with his thermometer. He winked at her

from the door before he shut it.

Peter Kronborg was sitting in his wife’s room, holding the bundle which

contained his son. His air of cheerful importance, his beard and

glasses, even his shirt-sleeves, annoyed the doctor. He beckoned

Kronborg into the living-room and said sternly:—

“You’ve got a very sick child in there. Why didn’t you call me before?

It’s pneumonia, and she must have been sick for several days. Put the

baby down somewhere, please, and help me make up the bed-lounge here in

the parlor. She’s got to be in a warm room, and she’s got to be quiet.

You must keep the other children out. Here, this thing opens up, I see,”

swinging back the top of the carpet lounge. “We can lift her mattress

and carry her in just as she is. I don’t want to disturb her more than

is necessary.”

Kronborg was all concern immediately. The two men took up the mattress

and carried the sick child into the parlor. “I’ll have to go down to my

office to get some medicine, Kronborg. The drug store won’t be open.

Keep the covers on her. I won’t be gone long. Shake down the stove and

put on a little coal, but not too much; so it’ll catch quickly, I mean.

Find an old sheet for me, and put it there to warm.”

The doctor caught his coat and hurried out into the dark street. Nobody

was stirring yet, and the cold was bitter. He was tired and hungry and

in no mild humor. “The idea!” he muttered; “to be such an ass at his

age, about the seventh! And to feel no responsibility about the little

girl. Silly old goat! The baby would have got into the world somehow;

they always do. But a nice little girl like that—she’s worth the whole

litter. Where she ever got it from—” He turned into the Duke Block and

ran up the stairs to his office.

Thea Kronborg, meanwhile, was wondering why she happened to be in the

parlor, where nobody but company—usually visiting preachers—ever

slept. She had moments of stupor when she did not see anything, and

moments of excitement when she felt that something unusual and pleasant

was about to happen, when she saw everything clearly in the red light

from the isinglass sides of the hard-coal burner—the nickel trimmings

on the stove itself, the pictures on the wall, which she thought very

beautiful, the flowers on the Brussels carpet, Czerny’s “Daily Studies”

which stood open on the upright piano. She forgot, for the time being,

all about the new baby.

When she heard the front door open, it occurred to her that the pleasant

thing which was going to happen was Dr. Archie himself. He came in and

warmed his hands at the stove. As he turned to her, she threw herself

wearily toward him, half out of her bed. She would have tumbled to the

floor had he not caught her. He gave her some medicine and went to the

kitchen for something he needed. She drowsed and lost the sense of his

being there. When she opened her eyes again, he was kneeling before the

stove, spreading something dark and sticky on a white cloth, with a big

spoon; batter, perhaps. Presently she felt him taking off her nightgown.

He wrapped the hot plaster about her chest. There seemed to be straps

which he pinned over her shoulders. Then he took out a thread and needle

and began to sew her up in it. That, she felt, was too strange; she must

be dreaming anyhow, so she succumbed to her drowsiness.

Thea had been moaning with every breath since the doctor came back, but

she did not know it. She did not realize that she was suffering pain.

When she was conscious at all, she seemed to be separated from her body;

to be perched on top of the piano, or on the hanging lamp, watching the

doctor sew her up. It was perplexing and unsatisfactory, like dreaming.

She wished she could waken up and see what was going on.

The doctor thanked God that he had persuaded Peter Kronborg to keep out

of the way. He could do better by the child if he had her to himself. He

had no children of his own. His marriage was a very unhappy one. As he

lifted and undressed Thea, he thought to himself what a beautiful thing

a little girl’s body was,—like a flower. It was so neatly and

delicately fashioned, so soft, and so milky white. Thea must have got

her hair and her silky skin from her mother. She was a little Swede,

through and through. Dr. Archie could not help thinking how he would

cherish a little creature like this if she were his. Her hands, so

little and hot, so clever, too,—he glanced at the open exercise book on

the piano. When he had stitched up the flaxseed jacket, he wiped it

neatly about the edges, where the paste had worked out on the skin. He

put on her the clean nightgown he had warmed before the fire, and tucked

the blankets about her. As he pushed back the hair that had fuzzed down

over her eyebrows, he felt her head thoughtfully with the tips of his

fingers. No, he couldn’t say that it was different from any other

child’s head, though he believed that there was something very different

about her. He looked intently at her wide, flushed face, freckled nose,

fierce little mouth, and her delicate, tender chin—the one soft touch