The servant replied that the child who brought the message was waiting to show him the way; and in a few minutes he was ready to go with her. Lilias, who was standing at the door, started homeward as soon as he appeared, and hurried on almost as rapidly as she came, so that the doctor had some difficulty in keeping her in sight.
“Are you sure you are not mistaking the way?” said he, as Lilias waited for him at the corner of the street, or rather the alley that led to the attic; “surely Mrs Elder cannot be living in a place like this?”
Lilias threw back her bonnet, and now, for the first time, looked in the doctor’s face. “Yes, sir, we have lived here ever since the time you used to come and see Archie.”
“Oh, he! my Lily of the valley, this is you, is it? Well, don’t cry,” he added; for his kindly voice had brought the tears to the child’s eyes. “We shall have your mother quite well in a day or two again, never fear.”
But he looked grave indeed as he stood beside her, and took her burning hand in his.
“You don’t think my mother will be long ill?” said Lilias, looking up anxiously into his face as he stood beside the bed.
“No, my child; I don’t think she will be long ill,” said he, gravely.
And Lilias, reassured by his words, and fearing no evil, smiled almost brightly again, as she went quietly about her household work.
“You think her dying, then?” said Mrs Blair, to whom his words conveyed a far different meaning.
“She is not dying yet; but, should her present symptoms continue long, she cannot possibly survive. She must have been exerting herself far beyond her strength or living long without nourishing food, to have become reduced to a state so frightfully low as that in which I find her.”