“I feel so—­nauseated!” Julia complained.  “So—­uncertain!”

“Yes, I know,” the nurse said soothingly, whisking out of the room.  Miss Toland followed her into the hall.

“She’s in great pain, she won’t have much of this?” asked the older woman anxiously.

“She’s not suffering much,” the nurse said brightly, after a cautious glance at Julia’s closed door.  “This isn’t much—­yet.  She’s a little scared, that’s all!”

Hating the nurse from the depth of her heart, Miss Toland went downstairs to see the doctor.  Jim was sitting with a newspaper on the porch, trying to smoke.  He jumped up nervously.

“Where’s Doctor Lippincott?” demanded Miss Toland.  “He ran in to San Rafael.  Back directly.”

“Ran in to San Rafael?  And you let him!  Why, I don’t see how he dared, Jim!”

“Oh, I guess he knows his business, Aunt Sanna!” Jim said miserably.  “Do you suppose I can go up for a while?”

“Yes, go,” said Miss Toland.  “I think she wants you, God bless her!”

But Julia wanted nobody and nothing.  Jim’s presence, his concerned voice and sympathetic eyes, only vaguely added to her distress.  She was frightened now, terrified at the recurring paroxysms of pain; she recoiled from the breezy matter-of-factness of the doctor and the nurse; the elaborate preparations for the crisis offended every delicate instinct of her nature.  She felt that the room was hot, and complained of the fire; but a few moments later her teeth chattered with a chill, and Miss Wheaton closed the wide windows through which a June breeze was wandering.

The day dragged on.  The doctor came back, talked to Jim and Miss Toland during luncheon about mushroom-raising, went upstairs to send Miss Wheaton down to her lunch, and to watch the patient a little while for himself.  Jim went up, too, but was sent down to reassure Mrs. Toland, who had arrived, and with Miss Sanna was holding a vigil in the pretty cretonne-hung drawing-room.  He was crossing the hall to go upstairs again, when a sound from above held him rigid and cold.  A long low moan of utter weariness and anguish drifted through the pleasant silence of the house, died away, and rose again.

Slowly the sense of tragedy deepened about them.  Mrs. Toland was white; Miss Toland’s face was streaked with tears.  The moaning was almost incessant now, but Jim in the hall could hear the nurse murmur above it, and now and then the doctor’s voice, short and sharp.

“I wonder if you could come in and give her a little chloroform, Jim?” said Doctor Lippincott, a pleasant, middle-aged man in a white linen suit and cap, appearing suddenly in the door of Julia’s room.  “I think we can ease her along a little now, and I need Miss Wheaton.”

Jim pushed his hair back with a wet hand; cleared his throat.

“Sure.  D’you want me to scrub up?” he asked huskily.

“Oh, no—­no, my dear boy!  Everything’s going splendidly.”  The doctor beckoned him in, and shut the door.  “Now, Mrs. Studdiford,” said he, “we’ll be all right here in no time!”