owed_. This was in very deed being of use! Here was real
work lying ready at my hand!

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A STRUGGLE FOR A LIFE.

Billie has been desperately ill. For three weeks he has lain at the
point of death, his little life hanging by a thread. Two trained nurses
have been in attendance, and a third unofficial one, in the person of
old Miss Harding! Winifred and Marion are living in my flat; Bridget
looks after them, and does our own housekeeping, and also supplements
Miss Brown's efforts, which are, to put it mildly, inadequate for the
occasion. She does not seem to realise that when people are torn with
anxiety they don't appreciate boiled mutton; and that when they sit up
half the night, waiting in sickening suspense to hear the next
temperature, a hot cup of chocolate can be more precious than rubies.

Therefore Bridget and I manufacture dainties, and carry them upstairs to
supplement the supplies.

For the first few days the illness took a normal course, and anxiety,
though real, was not acute; but on the fourth day strength failed
noticeably, and oxygen was ordered to help the clogged lungs to work.
At first it was given every two hours, then hourly, then every
half-hour, and every woman who knows anything about nursing understands
what _that_ means, plus doses of brandy, struggles to pour as much milk
as possible down an unwilling throat, and a constant taking of pulse and
temperature, to say nothing of hypodermic injections at those awful
moments when there seems no pulse to feel. It means that no one woman,
be she ever so competent, can keep up the fight single-handed for twelve
hours at a stretch, and that an understudy to work under her may mean
the very turning of the scale. I have been understudy by night, and
proud I am to record that Nurse proclaims me unusually "handy" for a
member of the "laity". Hour after hour we have fought together for the
little darling's life, while he lay unconscious against the piled
cushions, a waxen image, unrecognisable as the bonnie curly-headed
Billie we had loved. We racked our brains to think of new means and new
contrivances to fight the ever-increasing danger. With the aid of
screens and a sheet we contrived a tent over his cot, through a hole in
which the elongated cardboard funnel of the steam-kettle could enter and
give increased relief to the breathing. We made mustard poultices with
white of egg instead of water, to save needless irritati