Stephen Hopkins led her into the house; Dame Eliza met her within.
"Constance? Connie?" Thus Mistress Hopkins implored her to do her best, and to allow her to hope.
"Yes, yes, Mother," Constance replied to the prayer, and neither noted that they spoke to each other by names that they had never used before.
The first glimpse that Constance had of Damaris on the bed sent all the blood back against her heart with a pang that made her feel faint. It did not seem possible that she was in time, even should her knowledge be correct.
The child lay rigid as Constance's eyes fell on her; her lips and cheeks were ghastly, her long hair heightening the awful effect of her deathly colour. Frequent convulsions shook her body, her struggling breathing alone broke the stillness of the room.
"She is quieter, but it is not that she is better," whispered Dame Eliza.
Priscilla Alden stood ready with a spoon and glass in one hand, water in a small ewer in the other, always the efficient, sensible girl when needed.
Constance accepted the glass, took from it the spoon, gave the glass back to Priscilla and poured from the dark phial into the spoon the dose of belladonna that Doctor Fuller had explained to her would be proper to use in an extreme case of danger.
"How wonderful that he should have told me particularly about toadstool poisoning, yet it is because of the children," Constance's dual mind was saying to her, even while she poured the remedy and prayed with all her might for its efficacy.
"Open her mouth," she said to her father, and he obeyed her. Constance poured the belladonna down Damaris's throat.