"Can I 'elp, Miss Lee-onny?"
"Cookie, dear—you and Miss Primstinn, Miss Leanto and—yes, and
Ellen—none of the girls—and quickly—there's not a moment to lose."
"The doctor's coming, Mum," said a voice from the half-open door.
"The doctor is coming, dear," repeated the Principal.
Leonie answered with a strange authority in her words.
"We will not wait for the doctor!" She passed the tips of her fingers slowly across her forehead and down her cheek to the back of her neck, as was her habit when trying to solve some problem. "No, we will not wait, because—because I know!"
Ten minutes later the door opened to let in a young man, who stood for a moment outlined against a sea of faces, and then turned and shut the door most decisively and locked it.
"Who thought of that, I wonder," he said to himself, as he watched the four women kneeling round Jessica stretched out upon the floor.
They were going through the movements used in resuscitating the drowned, and he, too, knelt at a nod by the side of the fat old woman in an emerald green moirette petticoat and a somewhat déclassé bedjacket, who was breathing heavily through the unaccustomed exercise.
"Let us be—a bit, Sir!" she panted. "She don't some'ow feel—quite—as dead—like! Give us a—a chance. One—two—three—four. It's the—reg'lar—as does—it. Miss Lee—onny's orders—Sir—bless er——"