When he rose to go I paid his fee.  It was only half-a-crown, but he cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a change in the symptoms.

Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor to the door.

“Doctor,” I said, “is my baby very ill?”

He hesitated for a moment and then answered, “Yes.”

“Dangerously ill?”

Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip trembling) he said: 

“I won’t say that.  She’s suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous people to a restless child to keep it quiet.  But her real trouble comes of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and above all fresh air and sunshine.”

“Will she get better?”

“If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly.”

“And if . . . if I can’t,” I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips, “will she . . . die?”

The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keep it firm), and said: 

“She may.”

When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face with another of the great mysteries of a woman’s life—­Death—­the death of my child, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to.

Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, was excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave.  She wouldn’t have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if it hadn’t been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep after walking in percession. . . .

Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last of my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor.  While she was away, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap, praying for one more glimpse of my Martin’s sea-blue eyes, the bricklayer came lunging into the house.

“Where’s Lizer?” he said.

I told him and he cried: 

“The baiby again!  Allus the baiby!”

With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut and rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and lit it—­filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark and cough without rousing her.

I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke.

“Eh?” he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called and what he had said about fresh air.

“So that’s it, is it?” he said.  “Good!  Just reminds me of something I want to say, so I’ll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o’ speaking.  Last night I ’ad to go to Mile End for you, and here’s Lizer out on a sim’lar arrand.  If people ’ave got to be ’ospital nurses to a sick baiby they ought to be paid, mind ye.  We’re only pore, and it may be a sacred dooty walkin’ in percession, but it ain’t fillin’.”