Albright's,--I had found her much better
to-day,--and she let her nurse come over. The nurse says that Dodie is
threatened with membranous croup."
"Have you sent for Dr. Price?"
"There was no one to send,--the servants were gone, and the nurse was
afraid to venture out into the street. I telephoned for Dr. Price, and
found that he was out of town; that he had gone up the river this
morning to attend a patient, and would not be back until to-morrow. Mrs.
Price thought that he had anticipated some kind of trouble in the town
to-day, and had preferred to be where he could not be called upon to
assume any responsibility."
"I suppose you tried Dr. Ashe?"
"I could not get him, nor any one else, after that first call. The
telephone service is disorganized on account of the riot. We need
medicine and ice. The drugstores are all closed on account of the riot,
and for the same reason we couldn't get any ice."
Major Carteret stood beside the brass bedstead upon which his child was
lying,--his only child, around whose curly head clustered all his hopes;
upon whom all his life for the past year had been centred. He stooped
over the bed, beside which the nurse had stationed herself. She was
wiping the child's face, which was red and swollen and covered with
moisture, the nostrils working rapidly, and the little patient vainly
endeavoring at intervals to cough up the obstruction to his breathing.
"Is it serious?" he inquired anxiously. He had always thought of the
croup as a childish ailment, that yielded readily to proper treatment;
but the child's evident distress impressed him with sudden fear.
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