“And the other baby?” questioned the nurse, anxiously.
“Give it to one of these women to nurse, till something can be done; and order two coffins. They mustn’t lie here, or we shall have a panic among the patients.”
The nurse made an effort to take the child once more from its mother’s arms; but, for the first time, she seemed nervous and reluctant to touch the dead. The doctor startled her, saying impatiently,—
“There, be quick, or the woman will die! That will do—now let me see if anything can put life into her? Poor thing, poor thing! It’s a pity the baby is dead—but then what chance has an orphan in this world?—better dead, if she could only be brought to think so!”
While he was talking, the nurse bent suddenly to the floor and snatched up a small, silken bag, which, suspended by a braid chain, had been torn from the invalid’s neck when the babe was first removed from her arms. The doctor turned his eyes that way.
“I am always dropping this pin-cushion from my side!” she said, hurriedly, gathering up the chain in her hand; “there is no keeping any thing in its place.”
“Don’t stop for such nonsense,” cried the physician, impatiently, “or the woman will die under our hands.”
The nurse thrust the silken chain and its appendage into her bosom, and began in earnest to render assistance.
CHAPTER II.
MARY MARGARET DILLON.
The poor young creature was aroused at length from the chill torpor that had seized upon her; but she awoke to a hot flush of fever, raving with pathetic wildness of a thousand things which no one comprehended—of a husband that had left her in the depths of trouble, of the child that she fancied herself clasping, and of the nurse who seemed forever and ever over her bed, as she persisted in thinking, like a great, black statue that had chilled her heart to death beneath its shadow. Thus she raved and muttered, while the fever kindled wilder and hotter within her veins, and her eyes grew star-like in their glittering brightness.