the high-pressure child sat still and watched us, and we sat still and did our best, making much of the milk.
"Have you had a physician to see that child?" asked my brother, drawing back his chair.
She had not.
"Will you come to me, my dear?"
The child came to him, he felt its pulse and patted its hot forehead, looked down its throat, and leaned his ear on its chest.
"Are you a doctor, sir?"
"Yes, madam."
"Got some fever; hasn't it?"
"Yes."
"Not nigh so much as't had last night."
"Have you done anything for it?"
"Well, thar was a gentleman here; he told me sweet ile and sugar would be good for't, and I gave it a good deal of that: made it sick, it did. I thought, perhaps, that would do it good."
"Yes. You have had something like this in your family before, haven't you? You don't seem much alarmed."
"Oh yes, sir; that ar one (pointing to the frowzy girl, whose name was Angelina) had it two or three times—onst most as bad as this. All my children have had it. Is she bad, doctor?"
"Yes. I should say this was a very serious thing."
"Have you any medicine in the house?" he asked, after the woman had returned from a journey to the kitchen. She opened a drawer of the bureau, half full of patent medicines and some common drugs. "There's a whole heap o' truck in thar. I don't know what it all is. Whatever you want just help yourself. I can't read writin'; you must pick it out."
