When he rose to go I paid his fee. It was only half-a-crown, but he cannot have known how much that meant to me, for as he was leaving the kitchen he told me to send for him again in the morning if there were a change in the symptoms.
Feeling that I did not yet know the whole truth (though I was trembling in terror of it), I handed baby to Mrs. Oliver and followed the doctor to the door.
"Doctor," I said, "is my baby very ill?"
He hesitated for a moment and then answered, "Yes."
"Dangerously ill?"
Again he hesitated, and then looking closely at me (I felt my lower lip trembling) he said:
"I won't say that. She's suffering from marasmus, provoked by overdoses of the pernicious stuff that is given by ignorant and unscrupulous people to a restless child to keep it quiet. But her real trouble comes of maternal weakness, and the only cure for that is good nourishment and above all fresh air and sunshine."
"Will she get better?"
"If you can take her away, into the country she will, certainly."
"And if . . . if I can't," I asked, the words fluttering up to my lips, "will she . . . die?"