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 upon and tumbled off, and she had done both, her parent being away.  She had bruised and sprained her little wrist, and was in the depths of despair.

“Ah,” said poor Hope, “I was afraid something or other would happen if I left you.”

He took her to the window, and set her on his knee, and comforted her.  He cut a narrow slip off his pocket handkerchief, wetted it, and bound it lightly and deftly round her wrist, and poured consolation into her ear.  But soon she interrupted that, and flung sorrow to the winds; she uttered three screams of delight, and pointed eagerly through the window.

“Here they be again, the white swans!”

Hope looked, and there were two vessels, a brig and a bark, creeping down the river toward the sea, with white sails bellying to a gentle breeze astern.

It is experience that teaches proportion.  The eye of childhood is wonderfully misled in that matter.  Promise a little child the moon, and show him the ladder to be used, he sees nothing inadequate in the means; so Grace Hope was delighted with her swans.