“I’ll run with a telegram,” said Allbright, eagerly, to the doctor.

But at that moment Carroll lapsed into unconsciousness.  The excitement had been too much for him.  He lay as if asleep.

“Where does he live?” asked the doctor, of Allbright.

“I don’t know exactly.  Somewhere out on the Pennsylvania Railroad.”

“You don’t know?” repeated the doctor, with a faint accent of surprise.

Allbright shook his head.

“You were book-keeper in his office?”

“Yes, but I haven’t been there for some time.  I never asked any questions.”

The doctor turned and looked at Carroll.  Then he went out of the room, with Allbright following, and gave him some directions.  He asked for a glass two-thirds full of water and poured some dark drops into it.

“The minute he gets conscious again give him a spoonful of this,” he said, “and you had better sit beside him and watch him.”  Then he turned to Allbright’s sister, who was trembling from head to foot with a nervous chill.  “You take a dose of that whiskey your brother gave him,” he said, jerking his shoulder towards the inner room, “then go to bed, and don’t worry your head about him.”

“Oh, doctor, he isn’t going to die here?”

“Die here?  No, nor nowhere else for one while.  There is nothing the matter with the man except he bumped his head rather too hard for comfort.”

“How long is he likely to be here on their hands?” inquired the down-stairs woman.

“He will be able to go home in the morning, I think,” said the doctor.

“Oh, doctor, you aren’t going to go away and leave us with a strange man as sick as he is?” asked Allbright’s sister, hysterically.  She shook so that she could scarcely speak.

“You won’t have to worry half so much over a strange man as you would over one you know,” replied the doctor, jocosely, “and he is not very sick.  He will be all right soon.  Now you take some of your brother’s medicine and go to bed, for I have six cases to visit to-night before I go home, and I don’t want another.”

Allbright’s sister bridled with an odd, inexplicable pride.  She did not like to be a burden on her brother, nor make trouble, but there was a certain satisfaction in having the down-stairs woman, who, she had always suspected, rather made light of her ailments, hear for herself that she was undoubtedly delicate.  Even the minor and apparently paradoxical pretensions of life are dear to their possessors in lieu of others.

“Very well.  I suppose I’ve got to mind the doctor,” she replied, and even smiled foolishly and blushed.

The doctor turned to Allbright.

“I think he will be all right in the morning,” he said; “a bit light-headed, of course, but all right.  However, don’t let him go home before noon, on your life.  I will look in in the morning before he goes.”  And then he turned to Allbright’s sister.  “On second thought, I will let you make a good big bowl of that gruel of yours before you go to bed,” he said; “then he can take it in the course of the night if he is able; and beat him up some eggs in the morning.”