"It's the strike," said Mrs. Oliver, running to the window. "There's Ted, carrying a banner."
A little later I heard the confused noises of a strike meeting, which was being held on the Green. It was like the croaking of a frog-pond, with now and then a strident voice (the bricklayer's) crying "Buckle your belts tighter, and starve rather than give in, boys." Still later I heard the procession going away, singing with a slashing sound that was like driving wind and pelting rain:
"The land, the land, the blessed, blessed land,
Gawd gave the land to the people."
But nothing awakened baby, and towards three in the afternoon (the idea that she was really ill having taken complete possession of me) I asked where I could find the nearest doctor, and being told, I went off in search of him.
The doctor was on his rounds, so I left a written message indicating baby's symptoms and begging him to come to her immediately.
On the way back I passed a number of children's funerals—easily recognisable by the combined coach and hearse, the white linen "weepers" worn by the coachman and his assistant, and the little coffin, sprinkled with cheap flowers, in the glass case behind the driver's seat. These sights, which brought back a memory of the woman who carried my baby down the Mile End Road, almost deprived me of my senses.
I had hardly got back and taken off my coat and warmed my hands and dress by the fire before taking baby in my lap, when the doctor, in his gig, pulled up at the door.
He was a young man, but he seemed to take in the situation in a moment. I was the mother, wasn't I? Yes. And this woman was baby's nurse? Yes.
Then he drew up a chair and looked steadfastly down at baby, and I went through that breathless moment, which most of us know, when we are waiting for the doctor's first word.
"Some acute digestive trouble here apparently," he said, and then something about finding out the cause of it.