He found Miss Joanna indeed very ill with a sharp attack of the heart trouble to which she was subject. It was some time before she was relieved, but at length the pain passed by, and she was at least out of danger; but it had been a narrow escape.
"If I had been five minutes later I doubt if I could have saved her," said the doctor, "and it is all owing to that niece of yours that I got here in time."
"May I ask what you mean, doctor?" said Miss Middleton. "I thought that my sister Melissa went to you."
"Miss Melissa was just about to leave the house when I drove up. That bright little Teddy came for me on a wheel. Where she got it I don't know, unless you have relented and given her one. If you haven't, it is high time you did, for she deserves it for her presence of mind. And it is high time, too, that you changed your minds about bicycles, for it is all owing to one that Miss Joanna is alive now. I tell you that if I had been five minutes later she wouldn't be living now."
"Oh, doctor!" exclaimed the three ladies who were with him in the room next to Miss Joanna's, while the fourth watched by the invalid's bed.
"It is the truth," continued Dr. Morton, who was in the habit of speaking his mind plainly to the awe-inspiring Misses Middleton as well as to every one else; "and that bright little Teddy deserves a wheel of her own—if you haven't given her one already."
In the mean time Teddy had been wandering about the big house, not knowing quite what to do with herself. She went to her own room at first, but she could not stay there. It was just near enough to her aunt Joanna for her to hear muffled sounds from her room without knowing what they meant. She could not go in there, and her aunts were all too much occupied in obeying the doctor's commands and in waiting upon their sister to speak to her.
The servants had collected in the back part of the hall, very much frightened at the state of affairs, weeping and exclaiming with one another. Theodora, after trying each unoccupied room in turn, at last found herself in the parlor. It was very dark at first, but she pulled up the Venetian-blinds at the front windows, and let in a flood of moonlight.
Teddy had never before seen the room look so attractive. It was not often so brilliantly illuminated, for the shades were always carefully drawn. She moved restlessly about for a time, not daring to touch any of the treasures, but looking at them with interest and curiosity.