At the second summons she fled, leaving Miss Featherstone and the boy, standing with her trunk on his shoulders, on the threshold.

The young girl walked in, sat down in a large leathern chair, and was taking out her purse to pay her driver when a little fat man, with a very red face and bushy black hair, came flying through the hall, carrying a child in his arms.  He was followed by two or three sobbing children and the girl whom Miss Featherstone had already seen.  “My dear mees,” he said, never stopping until he reached the governess, “see this leetle enfant, this cher petit Henri.  He has already one contortion—­spasm—­what you call it?—­and I fear he goes to have one other.  Ma chere mademoiselle, have you some experience?  Is it that you know what we shall do?”

The child lay pale and unconscious in the arms of the distressed little foreigner.  Miss Featherstone tore off her gloves; her purse, unheeded, fell on the floor; she led the way into the nearest room, which proved to be the dining-room, the helpless group following.  “Bring a tub of hot water for his feet,” she said in calm, decided tones.  She was seated, and had taken the child in her arms.—­“Now, monsieur”—­to the Frenchman—­“will you be kind enough to give me some ice from that pitcher on the sideboard behind you?”

She drew a delicate little handkerchief from her pocket, and, putting pieces of ice in it, held it to the child’s head.  “Some one,” she continued, “take off his shoes and stockings.”

Her composure restored a degree of order, although no one seemed to have recovered their senses sufficiently to obey her as to the child’s shoes.  The boy who had acted as her driver knelt down and proceeded to accomplish it.  When the poor little feet were up to the knees in hot water and the child was evidently reviving, she said, “The doctor should be sent for immediately.  As this boy has a horse and wagon at the door, it would be best to send him.  What is the name of your family physician?”

“Doctor Harris.”

“You know where he lives?”

“Oh yes, ma’am, very well.”

“Stop a moment:  some one write a line, so that there shall be no mistake.”

The foreigner flung up his hands with a gesture of despair.  “It is so difficile for me to write l’Anglais—­” he began.

With the child lying on her left arm she opened her bag with her right—­the little driver, the most collected person besides herself of the party, holding it up to her—­found a scrap of paper and a pencil and wrote a brief, urgent appeal to the physician to come immediately, mentioning that the mother was from home, and signing herself “Laura Featherstone, governess.”

Sooner than she would have believed possible Doctor Harris appeared:  he came in his own gig, the little driver who had been so active in the events of the evening vanishing entirely from the scene, and, as it was afterward remembered, in the confusion without his douceur.