"Thank God if it's only that. Children recover from fainting fits, don't they? Oh, ayah, I could not bear to lose my baby!" she cried in choked accents.
"Say not like that. Got is goot and the baba will live. Now take out of the water, dry, and keep head cool," said the woman whose experience in the management of infants had gained her her present post at some considerable advantage to herself.
They placed the limp form, when dried, on the cool sheets in its crib and hung upon its every breath.
"Barnes-mem saying, when bad with fever, lap plenty hot place, bed goot," the ayah remarked; "Barnes-mem," a former mistress, being a standard reference in nursery difficulties.
"Had she many children?"
"Children? My lort! Every year a child. She was plenty blest. One child for every finger, and a grand-child older than her last. Master, he shake his head and say, 'Damn-damn,' but Barnes-mem, she say, 'Let come; the Lort will provide.'"
"Were they all brought up in India?"
"In Calcutta they were born and grew up; no Darjeeling pahar;[6] no Munsuri pahar! All living; all plenty strong."
"Yet most children cannot thrive out here—English, I mean."
"English Memsahib making much fuss, like there is no Got Almighty. Everywhere there is sickness, also in pahar."