Part 58

"This is diphtheria," he said; "you will want a physician in the neighborhood. Let's see, whom have you?" This to Millard.

Millard turned to his aunt. She looked at Phillida. "There's Dr. Smith around the corner," said Phillida.

Dr. Gunstone said, "Dr. Smith?" inquiringly to himself. But the name did not seem to recall any particular Smith.

"And Dr. Beswick in Seventeenth street," said Phillida.

"Beswick is a very good young fellow, with ample hospital experience," said Gunstone. "Can you send for him at once?"

Robert, who stood alert without the door, was told to bring Dr. Beswick in the carriage, and in a very short space of time Beswick was there, having left Mrs. Beswick sure that success and renown could not be far away when her husband was called on Gunstone's recommendation, and fetched in a coupé under the conduct of what seemed to her a coachman and a footman. Beswick's awkwardness and his abrupt up-and-downness of manner contrasted strangely with Dr. Gunstone's simple but graceful ways. A few rapid directions served to put the case into Beswick's hands, and the old doctor bowed swiftly to all in the room, descended the stairs, and, having picked his way hurriedly through a swarm of children on the sidewalk, entered the carriage again, and was gone.

Millard looked at his watch, remembered that he had had no breakfast, and prepared to take his leave.

"Thank you, Charley, ever so much," said his aunt. "I don't know what I should have done without you."

"Miss Callender is the one to thank," said Millard, scarcely daring to look at her, as he bade her and Dr. Beswick good-morning.

When he had reached the bottom of the long flight of stairs, Millard suddenly turned about and climbed upward once more.

"Miss Callender," he said, standing in the door, "let me speak to you, please."

Phillida went out to him. This confidential conversation could not but excite a rush of associations and emotion in the minds of both of them, so that neither dared to look directly at the other as they stood there in the obscure light which struggled through two dusty panes of glass at the top of the next flight.

"You must not stay here," he said. "You're very weary; you will be liable to take the disease. I am going to send a professional nurse."

This solicitude for her was so like the Charley of other times that it made Phillida tremble with a grateful emotion she could not quite conceal.

"A professional nurse will be better for Tommy. But I can not leave while Mrs. Martin has any great need for me." She could not confess to him the responsibility she felt in the case on account of her having undertaken it the evening before as a faith-doctor.

"What is the best way to get a nurse?" asked Millard, regarding her downcast face, and repressing a dreadful impulse to manifest his reviving affection.

"Dr. Beswick will know," said Phillida. "I will send him out." She was glad to escape into the room again, for she was afraid to trust her own feelings longer in Millard's company. The arrangement was made that Dr. Beswick should send a nurse, and then Millard and Beswick went down-stairs together.

Phillida stayed till Mr. Martin came home, hoping to soften the scene between husband and wife. In his heart Martin revered his wife's good sense, but he thought it due to his sex to assert himself once in a while against a wife whose superiority he could not but recognize. As soon as he had accomplished this feat, thereby proving his masculinity, he always repented it. For so long as his wife approved his course he was sure that he could not be far astray; but whenever his vanity had made him act against her judgment he was a mariner out of reckoning, and he made haste to take account of the pole star of her good sense.

He had just now been impelled by certain ugly elements in his nature to give his wife a taste of his power as the head of the family, the more that she had dared to make sport of his new science and of his new oracle, Miss Bowyer. But once he had become individually responsible for Tommy's life without the security of Mrs. Martin's indorsement on the back of the bond, he became extremely miserable. As noontime approached he grew so restless that he got excused from his bench early, and came home.

Motives of delicacy had prevented any communication between Phillida and Mrs. Martin regarding the probable attitude of Mr. Martin toward the transactions of the morning. But when his ascending footsteps, steady and solemn as the Dead March in "Saul," were heard upon the stairs, their hearts failed them.

"How's little Tommy?" he asked.

"I don't think he's any better," said Mrs. Martin.

"Come to think," said the husband, "I guess I'd better send word to Miss Bowyer to give it up and not come any more, and then I'd better get a regular doctor. I don't somehow like to take all the responsibility, come to think."

"Miss Bowyer's given up the case," said Mrs. Martin. "Charley's been here, scared to death about Tommy. He brought a great doctor from Fifth Avenue, and together they sent for Dr. Beswick. Miss Bowyer gave up the case."

"Give up the case, did she?" he said wonderingly.

"Yes."

"Well, that's better. But I didn't ever hardly believe she'd go and give it up."

Mr. Martin did not care to inquire further. He was rid of responsibility, and finding himself once more under the lee of his wife, he could eat his dinner and go back to work a happier man.