t in the east increased, suddenly rosy streamers, almost
like northern lights, were flung out across the sky. She could
distinguish things quite clearly. She heard the rattle of wheels, and
thought it was her father returning with Dr. Williams, but instead it
was the milkman in his yellow cart. He carried a bottle of milk
around to the south door. There was something horribly ghastly in
that every-day occurrence to the watching child. She realized the
interminable moving on of things in spite of all individual
sufferings, as she would have realized the revolution of a wheel of
torture. She felt that it was simply hideous that the milk should be
left at the door that morning, just as if everything was as it had
been. When the milkman jumped into his wagon, whistling, it seemed to
her as if he were doing an awful thing. The milk-wagon stopped at the
opposite house, then moved on out of sight down the street. She
wished to herself that the milkman's horse might run away while he
was at some door. The rancor which possessed her father, the kicking
against the pricks, was possessing her. She felt a futile rage, like
that of some little animal trodden underfoot. A boy whom she knew ran
past whooping, with a tin-pail, after the milkman. Evidently his
mother wanted some extra milk. The sun was reflected on the sides of
the swinging pail, and the flash of light seemed to hurt her, and she
felt the same unreasoning wrath against the boy. Why was not Willy
Royce's mother desperately sick, like her mother, instead of simply
sending for extra milk? The health and the daily swing of the world
in its arc of space seemed to her like a direct insult.

At last it occurred to her that she ought to dress herself. She left
the window, brushed her hair, braided it, and tied it with a blue
ribbon, and put on her little blue gingham gown which she commonly
wore mornings. Then she sat by the window again. It was not very long
after that that she saw the doctor coming, driving fast. Her father
was with him, and between them sat a woman. She recognized the woman
at once. She was a trained nurse who lived in Edgham. "They have got
Miss Bell," she thought; "mother must be awful sick." She knew that
Miss Bell's wages were twenty-five dollars a week, and that her
father would not have called her in except in an extreme case. She
watched her father help out the woman, who was stout and middle-aged,
and much larger than he. Miss Bell had a dress-suit c