"Yes."
"How many have you given her?"
"Five ... five every two hours."
That was not enough, Frau Dörr assured her, and after bringing to light all her medical knowledge she added: "She had let the medicine draw in the sun for a fortnight, and if one took it properly the water would go away as if it were pumped out. Old Selke at the Zoological had been just like a cask, and for more than four months he could never go to bed, but had to be propped up straight in a chair with all the windows wide open, but when he had taken the medicine for four days, it was just as if you squeezed a pig's bladder: haven't you seen how everything goes out of it and it is all soft and limp again!"
While she was telling all this, the vigorous Frau Dörr forced the sick woman to take a double dose from her thimble.
Lena, whose anxiety was only too justly redoubled by these heroic measures, took her shawl and made ready to go for a doctor. And Frau Dörr, who was not usually in favor of doctors, had nothing to say against it this time.
"Go," said she, "she can't hold out much longer. Just look here (and she pointed to the nostrils), that means death."
Lena started; but she could scarcely have reached the square in front of Michael's church, when the old woman, who had been lying in a half doze sat upright and called: "Lena ..."
"Lena is not here."
"Who is here then?"