Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/247

Rh At last I began to think; but had no more than begun, when her breast heaved, all her body heaved, before the sound of the cough came as a relief to it. I feared that my holding her might increase the effort, and made a little move to loosen from her, but she would not. Feared indeed: there was fear in me still.

'Rosebud,' I said, when I was sitting by her on the bed, stroking her hand, she lying back on the pillow looking at me, 'you've got a very bad cold.'

'Yes,' she said, 'I' And went off into another fit of coughing, the third she had had since I came in.

'How did you get it?' I asked.

Got it!' she said with a smile, 'Caught it!'

'Well' I began; and stopped. I was determining that she should be out of London before that night.

And so she was.—We went down together to Micklehurst, a place I had once heard of as sunny and with a deep blue sky. The child seemed very contented, quietly contented, dreamily contented, somehow contented as I did not quite like her to be. The patience with which she bore her convulsive fits of coughing seemed to me strange. Once I caught myself thinking of a dying monkey I had seen in the Paris streets.

Arrived in the hotel, albeit I hesitated a little, I determined that I would go and bring a doctor to see her at once. And, having made her comfortable in the window of a room that looked over the blue winding sea-y river, with its girdling darkened mountains, over which the sun was setting in mellow golden warmth, I went down and inquired the name and address of some doctor. I seemed to be drinking in the clear, pure air as I walked along.

I found the doctor's house, and the doctor; and brought him to see her. He reported a bad cold, cautiously adding that he would come again and see her on Saturday. (This was Wednesday). I accompanied him down to the hotel door. I rather liked his face: he had a little gold light in his eyes somewhere, perhaps only something to do with the sun there. I asked him one or two questions about her which he answered simply. She had caught a bad