“Oh, dear me!” gasped Lyddy, reeling for the moment.
Then she dashed for the bedroom where her father lay. Smoke was sifting in from the hall through the cracks about the ill-hung door.
“Father! Father!” she gasped.
He lay on the bed, as still as though sleeping. But the noise above should have aroused him by this time, had her own shrill cry not done so.
Yet he did not move.
Lyddy leaped to the bedside, seizing her father’s shoulder with desperate clutch. She shook his frail body, and the head wagged from side to side on the pillow in so horrible a way–so lifeless and helpless–that she was smitten with terror.
Was he dead? He had never been like this before, she was positive.
She tore open his waistcoat and shirt and placed her hand upon his heart. It was beating–but, oh, how feebly!
And then she heard the flat door opened with a key–’Phemie’s key. Her sister cried:
“Dear me, Lyddy! the hall is full of smoke. It isn’t your stove that’s smoking so, I hope? And here’s Aunt Jane Hammond come to see us. I met her on the street, and these four flights of stairs have almost killed her—Why! what’s happened, Lyddy?” the younger girl broke off to ask, as her sister’s pale face appeared at the bedroom door.