his cuffs and coat—there was no spare bedroom in that house. Peter
Kronborg’s seventh child, a boy, was being soothed and cosseted by his
aunt, Mrs. Kronborg was asleep, and the doctor was going home. But he
wanted first to speak to Kronborg, who, coatless and fluttery, was
pouring coal into the kitchen stove. As the doctor crossed the
dining-room he paused and listened. From one of the wing rooms, off to
the left, he heard rapid, distressed breathing. He went to the kitchen
door.
“One of the children sick in there?” he asked, nodding toward the
partition.
Kronborg hung up the stove-lifter and dusted his fingers. “It must be
Thea. I meant to ask you to look at her. She has a croupy cold. But in
my excitement—Mrs. Kronborg is doing finely, eh, doctor? Not many of
your patients with such a constitution, I expect.”
“Oh, yes. She’s a fine mother.” The doctor took up the lamp from the
kitchen table and unceremoniously went into the wing room. Two chubby
little boys were asleep in a double bed, with the coverlids over their
noses and their feet drawn up. In a single bed, next to theirs, lay a
little girl of eleven, wide awake, two yellow braids sticking up on the
pillow behind her. Her face was scarlet and her eyes were blazing.
The doctor shut the door behind him. “Feel pretty sick, Thea?” he asked
as he took out his thermometer. “Why didn’t you call somebody?”
She looked at him with greedy affection. “I thought you were here,” she
spoke between quick breaths. “There is a new baby, isn’t there? Which?”
“Which?” repeated the doctor.
“Brother or sister?”
He smiled and sat down on the edge of the bed. “Brother,” he said,
taking her hand. “Open.”
“Good. Brothers are better,” she murmured as he put the glass tube under
her tongue.
“Now, be still, I want to count.” Dr. Archie reached for her hand and
took out his watch. When he put her hand back under the quilt he went
over to one of the windows—they were both tight shut—and lifted it a
little way. He reached up and ran his hand along the cold, unpapered
wall. “Keep under the covers; I’ll come back to you in a moment,” he
said, bending over the glass lamp with his thermometer. He winked at her
from the door before he shut it.
Peter Kronborg was sitting in his wife’s room, holding the bundle which
contained his son. His air of cheerful importance, his beard and
glasses, even his shirt-sleeves, annoyed the doctor. He beckoned
Kronborg into the living-room and said sternly:—
“You’ve got a very sick child in there. Why didn’t you call me before?
It’s pneumonia, and she must have been sick for several days. Put the
baby down somewhere, please, and help me make up the bed-lounge here in
the parlor. She’s got to be in a warm room, and she’s got to be quiet.
You must keep the other children out. Here, this thing opens up, I see,”
swinging back the top of the carpet lounge. “We can lift her mattress
and carry her in just as she is. I don’t want to disturb her more than
is necessary.”
Kronborg was all concern immediately. The two men took up the mattress
