"No, no, no, no, NO!" cried the victim of this highly feminine deduction, in panic. "It isn't any one."
"No, of course it isn't, dear. I didn't mean to tease you. Hello! what have we here?"
The car stopped with a jar on a side street, some distance from the quarantined section. Seated on the curb a woman was wailing over the stiffened form of a young child. The boy's teeth were clenched and his face darkly suffused.
"Convulsions," said Esmé.
The two girls were out of the car simultaneously. The agonized mother, an Italian, was deaf to Esmé's persuasions that the child be turned over to them.
"What shall we do?" she asked, turning to Kathleen in dismay. "I think he's dying, and I can't make the woman listen."
Something of her father's stern decisiveness of character was in Kathleen Pierce.
"Don't be a fool!" she said briskly to the mother, and she plucked the child away from her. "Start the car, Esmé."
The woman began to shriek. A crowd gathered. O'Farrell providentially appeared from around a corner. "Grab her, you," she directed O'Farrell.
The politician hesitated. "What's the game?" he began. Then he caught sight of Esmé. "Oh, it's you, Miss Elliot. Sure. Hi! Can it!" he shouted, fending off the distracted mother. "They'll take the kid to the hospital. See? You go along quiet, now."