“O, the glass! the glass!”

The Hospital doctor stood still; so did Sary Jane, half risen from her chair; so did the very South Street boys, gaping in the gutter, with their hands full of stones, such a cry rang out from the palace window.

“O, the glass! the glass! the glass!”

In a twinkling the South Street boys were at the mercy of the South Street police; and the Hospital doctor, bounding over a beachful of shattered, scattered waves, stood, out of breath, beside the Lady of Shalott’s bed.

“O the little less, and what worlds away!”

The Lady of Shalott lay quite still in her little brown calico night-gown [I cannot learn, by the way, that Bulfinch’s studious and in general trustworthy researches have put him in possession of this point.  Indeed, I feel justified in asserting that Mr. Bulfinch never so much as intimated that the Lady of Shalott wore a brown calico night-dress]—­the Lady of Shalott lay quite still, and her lips turned blue.

“Are you very much hurt?  Where were you struck?  I heard the cry, and came.  Can you tell me where the blow was?”

But then the doctor saw the glass, broken and blown in a thousand glittering sparks across the palace floor; and then the Lady of Shalott gave him a little blue smile.

“It’s not me.  Never mind.  I wish it was.  I’d rather it was me than the glass.  O, my glass! my glass!  But never mind.  I suppose there’ll be some other—­pleasant thing.”

“Were you so fond of the glass?” asked the doctor, taking one of the two chairs that Sary Jane brought him, and looking sorrowfully about the room.  What other “pleasant thing” could even the Lady of Shalott discover in that room last summer, at the east end of South Street?

“How long have you lain here?” asked the sorrowful doctor, suddenly.

“Since I can remember, sir,” said the Lady of Shalott, with that blue smile.  “But then I have always had my glass.”

“Ah!” said the doctor, “the Lady of Shalott!”

“Sir?” said the Lady of Shalott.

“Where is the pain?” asked the doctor, gently, with his finger on the Lady of Shalott’s pulse.

The Lady of Shalott touched the shoulder of her brown calico night-dress, smiling.

“And what did you see in your glass?” asked the doctor, once more stooping to examine “the pain.”

The Lady of Shalott tried to tell him, but felt confused; so many strange things had been in the glass since it grew hot.  So she only said that there were waves and a purple wing, and that they were broken now, and lay upon the floor.

“Purple wings?” asked the doctor.

“Over the sidewalk,” nodded the Lady of Shalott.  “It comes up at night.”

“Oh!” said the doctor, “the malaria.  No wonder!”

“And what about the waves?” asked the doctor, talking while he touched and tried the little brown calico shoulders.  “I have a little girl of my own down by the waves this summer.  She—­I suppose she is no older than you!”