"I hope not," said Mrs. Martin, in renewed alarm.
Mr. Martin, who was shaving in his shirt-sleeves near the window, only turned about when he got the lather off his face to say: "Good-morning, Miss Callender. How's things with you?"
Phillida returned this with the slightest good-morning. She was out of patience with Mr. Martin, and she was revolving a plan for discovering whether Tommy's distemper were diphtheria or not. During her long midnight meditations she had gone over every word of Dr. Beswick's about bacteria and bacilli. She remembered his statement that the micrococcus diphtheriticus was to be found in the light-colored patches visible in the throat of a diphtheria patient. At what stage these were developed she did not know, but during her hours of waiting for morning she had imagined herself looking down little Tommy's throat. She now asked for a spoon, and, having roused Tommy from a kind of stupor, she inserted the handle as she had seen physicians do, and at length succeeded in pressing down the tongue so as to discover what she took to be diphtheria patches on the fauces.
"Mrs. Martin, I am sure this is diphtheria. You must get a doctor right away."
"I'll attend to that," said Mr. Martin, who had now got his beard off and his coat on.
As he donned his hat and went out the door, Mrs. Martin called: "Father, you'd better get Dr. Beswick"; but her husband made no reply further than to say, "I'll attend to that," without interrupting for a moment his steady tramp down the stairs.
"I'm afraid," said Mrs. Martin, "that he has gone for Miss Bowyer."
"I hope not," said Phillida.
"If he gets her he'll be awfully stubborn. He has been offended that I sent for you last night. It touches his dignity. He thinks that if he doesn't have his way in certain things he is put out of his place as head of the family."
Phillida presently perceived that Mrs. Martin was shedding tears of apprehension.