g he has had before; but nurse thinks he looks--oh,
my lady, there will be nothing to be frightened about--we have sent for
the doctor."

Lucy was in the room where little Tom was, before Fletcher had finished
what she was saying. The child was seated on his nurse's knee. His eyes
were heavy, yet blazing with fever. He was plucking with his little hot
hands at the woman's dress, flinging himself about her, from one arm,
from one side to the other. When he saw his mother he stretched out
towards her. Just eighteen months old; not able to express a thought;
not much, you will say, perhaps, to change to a woman the aspect of
heaven and earth. She took him into her arms without a word, and laid
her cheek--which was so cool, fresh with the morning air, though her
heart was so fevered and sick--against the little cheek, which burned
and glowed. "What is it? Can you tell what it is?" she said in a whisper
of awe. Was it God Himself who had stepped in--who had come to
interfere?

Then the baby began to wail with that cry of inarticulate suffering
which is the most pitiful of all the utterances of humanity. He could
not tell what ailed him. He looked with his great dazed eyes pitifully
from one to another as if asking them to help him.

"It is the fever, my lady," said the nurse. "We have sent for the
doctor. It may not be a bad attack."

Lucy sat down, her limbs failing her, her heart failing her still more,
her bonnet and out-door dress cumbering her movements, the child tossing
and restless in her arms. This was not the form his ailments had ever
taken before. "Do you know what is to be done? Tell me what to do for
him," she said.

There was a kind of hush over all the house. The servants would not
admit that anything was wrong until their mistress should come home. As
soon as she was in the nursery and fully aware of the state of affairs,
they left off their precautions. The maids appeared on the staircases
clandestinely as they ought not to have done. Mrs. Freshwater herself
abandoned her cosy closet, and declared in an impressive voice that no
bell must be rung for luncheon--nor anything done that could possibly
disturb the blessed baby, she said as she gave the order. And Williams
desired to know what was preparing for Mr. Randolph's dinner, and
announced his intention of taking it up himself. The other meal, the
lunch, in the dining-room, was of no importance to any one. If he could
take his beef-tea it would do hi