He was interrupted by Mrs. Pinckney crossing the room, seizing Miss Featherstone’s hand and kissing her with effusion:  “My dear Miss Featherstone—­your name is Featherstone, is it not?—­I have no words to thank you sufficiently.”

“Oh, the chere mees!” burst forth the little Frenchman.  “I was so full of frighten I not know what to do, which way to turn myself; and she, so calm, so smooth,” he said, hesitating for a word, and apparently discomfited when he found it—­“she take the helm, she issue the orders:  every one obey, and the child is saved.”  After this peroration he glanced around as if for applause.

“I was about to say,” resumed Doctor Harris, “that, now that the nurse has returned, Miss Featherstone, who has been travelling all day, had better have some dinner and be sent to bed.”

“Oh, certainly,” replied Mrs. Pinckney; “and now that I’m so much relieved I’d like some dinner myself.—­Mr, Brown, do you know what prospects there are of our having any dinner?”

The tutor shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands with a deprecatory gesture:  “I know not, my dear madame.  Les enfants et moi, we have our dinner at two o’clock:  we did not comprehend that madame would return to-night,” as a happy apologetic afterthought.

Mrs. Pinckney glanced at a little watch which she took from her belt:  “Twelve o’clock, but the servants probably have not gone to bed.”—­She rang the bell.  “Mary,” to a maid who entered, “tell the cook to make some tea and send in cold chicken or beef—­whatever is left from dinner.”

“I think the fire is out, Mrs. Pinckney,” the servant hesitatingly replied.

“Oh, no matter:  let her get a few chips and make a fire:  I must have my tea.”—­Doctor Harris rose.  “Oh, doctor, don’t go until you have taken one more look at my darling.”

The nursery was on the same floor.  Mrs. Pinckney insisted on kissing the child, much to the physician’s annoyance.  He checked her, and carefully refrained from talking himself while in the room.  As he was taking leave at the front door she repeated, “Now, doctor, you’re sure I can be comfortable—­that I can go to bed and go to sleep?  Tell me positively”—­and she looked earnestly in his face—­“that the child will never have another convulsion.”

He laughed, and bent an admiring tender, gaze on the pretty mother, who stood appealingly before him:  “My dear Mrs. Pinckney, I cannot swear positively that Harry will never have another convulsion, particularly if he is allowed to eat nuts and raisins ad libitum:  however, with ordinary care I don’t think it at all probable.”—­“Is it possible,” he reflected as he drove home, “that I want to marry that woman, selfish and inconsiderate as she is?  Why, she would have let the governess, a perfect stranger, sit up with the child if I hadn’t interfered!  She is awfully pretty, though.  I can’t help liking her:  then, her money would be a comfortable addition to my professional emoluments.”