The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicating baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately.

On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals--easily recognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers"

worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled with cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. These sights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby down the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses.

I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands and dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in his gig, pulled up at the door.

He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment.

I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes.

Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I went through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we are waiting for the doctor's first word.

"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and then something about finding out the cause of it.

But hardly had he put his hands on my child as she lay in my lap than there came a faintly discoloured vomit.

"What have you been giving her?" he said, looking round at Mrs. Oliver.

Mrs. Oliver protested that she had given baby nothing except her milk, but the doctor said sharply:

"Don't talk nonsense, woman. Show me what you've given her."

Then Mrs. Oliver, looking frightened, went upstairs and brought down a bottle of medicine, saying it was a soothing syrup which I had myself bought for baby's cough.

"As I thought!" said the doctor, and going to the door and opening it, he flung the bottle on to the waste ground opposite, saying as he did so:

"If I hear of you giving your babies any more of your soothing syrup I'll see what the Inspector has to say."

After that, ignoring nurse, he asked me some searching and intimate questions--if I had had a great grief or shock or worry while baby was coming, and whether and how long I had nursed her.

I answered as truthfully as I could, though I saw the drift of his inquiries, and was trembling with fear of what he would tell me next.

He said nothing then, however, except to make his recommendations. And remembering my loss of work, my heart sank as he enumerated baby's needs--fresh cow's milk diluted with lime water, small quantities of meat juice, and twenty to thirty drops of the best brandy three or four times a day.

When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but he cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a change in the symptoms.

Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor to the door.

"Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?"

He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes."

"Dangerously ill?"

Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip trembling) he said:

"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comes of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and above all fresh air and sunshine."

"Will she get better?"

"If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly."

"And if ... if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips, "will she ... _die_?"

The doctor looked steadfastly at me again (I was biting my lip to keep it firm), and said:

"She _may_."

When I returned to the kitchen I knew that I was face to face with another of the great mysteries of a woman's life--Death--the death of my child, which my very love and tenderness had exposed her to.

Meantime Mrs. Oliver, who was as white as a whitewashed wall, was excusing herself in a whining voice that had the sound of a spent wave.

She wouldn't have hurt the pore dear precious for worlds, and if it hadn't been for Ted, who was so tired at night and wanted sleep after walking in percession... .

Partly to get rid of the woman I sent her out (with almost the last of my money) for some of the things ordered by the doctor. While she was away, and I was looking down at the little silent face on my lap, praying for one more glimpse of my Martin's sea-blue eyes, the bricklayer came lunging into the house.

"Where's Lizer?" he said.

I told him and he cried:

"The baiby again! Allus the baiby!"

With that he took out of his pocket a cake of moist tobacco, cut and rolled some of it in his palm, and then charged his pipe and lit it--filling the air with clouds of rank smoke, which made baby bark and cough without rousing her.

I pointed this out to him and asked him not to smoke.

"Eh?" he said, and then I told him that the doctor had been called and what he had said about fresh air.

"So that's it, is it?" he said. "Good! Just reminds me of something I want to say, so I'll introdooce the matter now, in a manner o' speaking.

Last night I 'ad to go to Mile End for you, and here's Lizer out on a sim'lar arrand. If people 'ave got to be 'ospital nurses to a sick baiby they ought to be paid, mind ye. We're only pore, and it may be a sacred dooty walkin' in percession, but it ain't fillin'."

Choking with anger, I said:

"Put out your pipe, please."

"Ma'am to _you_!"

"Put it out this moment, sir, or I'll see if I can't find somebody to make you."

The bricklayer laughed, then pointed with the shank of his pipe to the two photographs over the mantelpiece, and said:

"See them? Them's me, with my dooks up. If any friend o' yourn as is interested in the baiby comes to lay a 'and on me I'll see if I've forgot 'ow to use 'em."

I felt the colour shuddering out of my cheeks, and putting baby into the cot I turned on the man and cried:

"You scoundrel! The doctor has told me what is the immediate cause of my baby's illness and your wife has confessed to giving overdoses of a drug at your direction. If you don't leave this house in one minute I'll go straight to the police-station and charge you with poisoning my child."

The bully in the coward was cowed in a moment.

"Don't get 'uffy, ma'am," he said. "I'm the peaceablest man in the East End, and if I mentioned anything about a friend o' yourn it slipped out in the 'eat of the moment--see?"