"Sister!"
The urgent word pierced the thick cloak of sleep and scattered fair dreams of the home of her childhood.
"Sister!"
She started into a sitting posture, and in another moment was out of bed, for Margaret Carden was saying—
"Mr. H—— has just brought us a croup case, Sister, and a very bad one, I am afraid."
As the nurse hurried away the great hospital clock boomed out the hour—two—and almost immediately the Sister had joined a sad little group in front of the fire that, even during the summer, often was lighted in the huge open grate at night.
Nurse Carden had taken into her arms a poor little child of three, who was fighting and beating the air for the struggling breaths that the tortured throat was strangling.
It was a pitiful sight. The poor young father and mother—scarcely more than boy and girl—stood by, the former uttering sharp clicks with his tongue against his teeth as he watched and was tortured too in the sufferings of "the little chap," the latter literally wringing her hands and moaning with the agony of her mother's heart.
They were trying every remedy without avail. There was only tracheotomy left for them to do. But the father refused his consent.
Cut the fair skin of his boy? No, that they shouldn't!