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"It's all right, dear, it's all right," she repeated monotonously, with set lips, "the doctor's coming. It wasn't Pullton's fault. It's all right."

Caroline wriggled between two policemen, and made for a striped blue and white skirt that lay motionless on the ground. Across the white apron ran a broad dirty smudge.

Caroline ran forward.

"Delia! Delia!" she gulped. "Is she—is she dead?"

A little man with eyeglasses looked up from where he knelt beside the blue and white skirt.

"I don't believe so, my dear," he said briskly; "is this your nurse? See, she's opening her eyes, now—speak to her gently."

As he shifted a leather-covered flask from one hand to the other, Caroline saw a strange face with drawn purplish lids when she had always known two merry gray eyes, and tight thin lips she could not believe Delia's. The head moved a little from side to side, the lips parted slightly. A nervous fear seized her and she turned to run away; but she remembered suddenly how kind Delia had been to her; how that very morning—it seemed so long