I was fearfully cold before I got there.  The snow was in my slippers and down my neck and among the thickening masses of my hair.  At one moment I came upon some sheep and lambs that were sheltering under a hedge, and they bleated in the silence of the night.

But at last I saw the warm red windows of the doctor’s cottage, and coming to the wicket gate, I pushed it open though it was clogged with snow, and stepped up to the porch.  My teeth were now chattering with cold, but as well as I could I began to sing, and in my thin and creachy voice I had got as far as—­

“Ch’ist was born in Bef-lem,
Ch’ist was born in Bef-lem,
Ch’ist was born in Bef-lem,
An’ in a manger laid. . . .”

when I heard a rumbling noise inside the house.

Immediately afterwards the door was opened upon me, and a woman whom I knew to be the doctor’s wife looked down into my face with an expression of bewilderment, and then cried: 

“Goodness gracious me, doctor—­if it isn’t little Mary O’Neill, God bless her!”

“Bring her in at once, then,” said the voice of Doctor Conrad from within, and at the next moment I found myself in a sort of kitchen-parlour which was warm with a glowing turf fire that had a kettle singing over it, and cosy and bright with a ragwork hearth-rug, a dresser full of blue pottery and a sofa settle covered with red cloth.

I suppose the sudden change to a warm room must have caused me to faint, for I have no recollection of what happened next, except that I was sitting on somebody’s lap and that she was calling me boght millish (little sweet) and veg-veen (little dear) while she rubbed my half-frozen limbs and did other things that were, I am sure, all womanly and good.

When I came to myself Doctor Conrad was saying I would have to sleep there that night, and he must go over to the Big House and tell my mother what had happened.  He went, and by the time he came back, I had been bathed in a dolly-tub placed in front of the fire, and was being carried upstairs (in a nightdress many sizes too large for me) to a little dimity-white bedroom, where the sweet smelling “scraas” under the sloping thatch of the roof came down almost to my face.

I know nothing of what happened during the night, except that I was feeling very hot, and that as often as I opened my eyes the doctor’s wife was leaning over me and speaking in a soft voice that seemed far away.  But next day I felt cooler and then Aunt Bridget came in her satin mantle and big black hat, and said something, while standing at the end of my bed, about people paying the penalty when they did things that were sly and underhand.

Towards evening I was much easier, and when the doctor came in to see me at night he said: 

“How are we this evening?  Ah, better, I see.  Distinctly better!”

And then turning to his wife he said: 

“No need to stay up with her to-night, Christian Ann.”