Whereat I rushed in, filled with alarm.
CHAPTER XXIV
"THE MOTHER AND CHILD"
Little Paul, as I immediately saw as soon as I looked at him, was very ill. He had, of late, always shown pleasure at my coming; he had babbled of simple things and of mysteries; his little arms spontaneously came to me and I would take him in my arms and get moist kisses from his tiny lips and dandle him and share in his ecstasies over woolly lambs.
Porter came in a few minutes later and declared the trouble to be a beginning of measles. Eulalie acknowledged that, a week or ten days before, Baby Paul had come in contact with a blotchy infant in the Park. She had snatched him up and carried him away, after which she had thought no more about it. We sent at once for a trained nurse, whom Eulalie at first considered as an intruder with evil intentions, but whose gentle ministrations soon won her heart.
"Am I to send immediately for Mrs. Dupont?" I asked the doctor.
"It doesn't look like a very severe case," he answered, "but it might be better to communicate with her."
A few minutes later I had Frances on the long-distance telephone, greatest of marvels. I stood in her little hallway in New York, and over in Buffalo, a half a thousand miles away or so, I heard her dear voice becoming excited and tremulous.
"I simply must sing to-night," she was saying, "but from the concert-hall I will rush to the station and take the train. No, don't take the trouble to meet me, David dear, for I'll jump in a taxi and come ever so quick, but you can be at the apartment, if you like. No, I can't tell you the exact time, but it will be the first train after eleven o'clock. You can look in the time table and find out when it reaches New York. Thank you a thousand times, David dear!"