From where I sat I could see Atkins’ house.  It is only a little way from us, up the hill.  There were a number of people assembled in front of it, because whenever any one is hurt or very ill they are apt to gather around, as people do sometimes in New York before a house where an ambulance has stopped.  Then I saw the doctor sprinting out towards Sammy’s house, whence he returned carrying another bag.  Of course I have several times helped him a little, in the last month, when Mrs. Barnett didn’t get in ahead of me, so I rose.

“I am going up to Atkins’,” I told Dad.  “I wonder what is the matter.  I shall only be gone a few minutes.”

So I ran away, bare-headed, and rushed to the place, but before I reached it Mrs. Barnett arrived there, all out of breath.

When I passed through the waiting people I heard Dr. Grant’s voice, and he spoke very angrily.  I had never thought before that he could get quite so mad.  There was a swarm of women in the house, some of them with babies in their arms, and a few children, among whom was Frenchy’s little boy, had also slipped in.

“Get out of here!” he was shouting, roughly.  “All of you but the child’s mother and Mrs. Atkins.  Haven’t I told you it is dangerous?  Do you want to spread this thing about and kill off all your children?  And you, Mrs. Barnett, must give the example.  I won’t have you running chances with those babies of yours.  Do get out, like a dear woman, and chevy these other ones out with you.”

He was bustling them all out like a lot of hens, in his effective, energetic way, and then he saw me.

“I want you to get out too, Miss Jelliffe,” he ordered me.  “This is a bad case of diphtheria.  The child is choking and I must relieve it at once.”

I took a few steps back, rather resentfully, because I had never been spoken to in that way before, and I thought it very rude of him, but I did not leave the place.  The doctor was very busy with some instruments and perhaps had forgotten my presence.

He made the woman sit on a stool, with the little girl wrapped in a sheet and sitting on her lap.  I saw him take up a shiny instrument, which he fastened in the baby’s mouth, notwithstanding her struggles.

“Now hold her firmly,” he ordered, “and you, Mrs. Atkins, get behind her and take her head.  Hold it steady, just this way.  Never mind her crying.”

But the little one wrenched herself away from the woman’s grasp.  The breath entered its lungs with an awful long hoarse sound and the poor little lips were very blue.

“For God’s sake, hold her better,” he cried again.

“I’m all of a tremble,” said Mrs. Atkins, weeping.  “She’s sure goin’ ter die.  I kin never hold her, she do be fightin’ me so.”

Of course there was only one thing to do.  I ran out of the corner to which I had retreated and pushed the foolish woman away and seized the baby’s head so that it could not move.