A Perilous Secret | Page 5

day that Grace
Hope began to cough and alarm her father, Mary Bartley flushed and
paled, and showed some signs of feverishness.
The older nurse, a vigilant person, told Mr. Bartley directly; and the
doctor was sent for post-haste. He felt her pulse, and said there was
some little fever, but no cause for anxiety. He administered syrup of
poppies, and little Mary passed a tranquil night.
Next day, about one in the afternoon, she became very restless, and was
repeatedly sick. The doctor was sent for, and combated the symptoms;
but did not inquire closely into the cause. Sickness proceeds
immediately from the stomach; so he soothed the stomach with alkaline
mucilages, and the sickness abated. But next day alarming symptoms
accumulated, short breathing, inability to eat, flushed face, wild eyes.
Bartley telegraphed to a first-rate London physician. He came, and
immediately examined the girl's throat, and shook his head; then he
uttered a fatal word--Diphtheria.
They had wasted four days squirting petty remedies at symptoms,
instead of finding the cause and attacking it, and now he told them
plainly he feared it was too late--the fatal membrane was forming, and,
indeed, had half closed the air-passages.
Bartley in his rage and despair would have driven the local doctor out
of the house, but this the London doctor would not allow. He even
consulted him on the situation, now it was declared, and, as often
happens, they went in for heroic remedies since it was too late.
But neither powerful stimulants nor biting draughts nor caustic

applications could hinder the deadly parchment from growing and
growing.
The breath reduced to a thread, no nourishment possible except by
baths of beef tea, and similar enemas. Exhaustion inevitable. Death
certain.
Such was the hopeless condition of the rich man's child, surrounded by
nurses and physicians, when the father of the poor man's child applied
to the clerk Bolton for that employment which meant bread for his
child, and perhaps life for her.
William Hope returned to his little Grace with a loaf of bread he bought
on the road with Bolton's shilling, and fresh milk in a soda-water bottle.
He found her crying. She had contrived, after the manner of children, to
have an accident. The room was almost bare of furniture, but my lady
had found a wooden stool that could be mounted upon and tumbled off,
and she had done both, her parent being away. She had bruised and
sprained her little wrist, and was in the depths of despair.
"Ah," said poor Hope, "I was afraid something or other would happen
if I left you."
He took her to the window, and set her on his knee, and comforted her.
He cut a narrow slip off his pocket handkerchief, wetted it, and bound it
lightly and deftly round her wrist, and poured consolation into her ear.
But soon she interrupted that, and flung sorrow to the winds; she
uttered three screams of delight, and pointed eagerly through the
window.
"Here they be again, the white swans!"
Hope looked, and there were two vessels, a brig and a bark, creeping
down the river toward the sea, with white sails bellying to a gentle
breeze astern.
It is experience that teaches proportion. The eye of childhood is
wonderfully misled in that matter. Promise a little child the moon, and
show him the ladder to be used, he sees nothing inadequate in the
means; so Grace Hope was delighted with her swans.
But Hope, who made it his business to instruct her, and not deceive her
as some thoughtless parents do, out of fun, the wretches, told her,
gently, they were not swans, but ships.
She was a little disappointed at that, but inquired what they were doing.
"Darling," said he, "they are going to some other land, where honest,

hard-working people can not starve, and, mark my words, darling," said
he--she pricked her little ears at that--"you and I shall have to go with
them, for we are poor."
"Oh," said little Grace, impressed by his manner as well as his words,
and nodded her pretty head with apparent wisdom, and seemed greatly
impressed.
Then her father fed her with bread and milk, and afterward laid her on
the bed, and asked her whether she loved him.
"Dearly, dearly," said she.
"Then if you do," said he, "you will go to sleep like a good girl, and not
stir off that bed till I come back."
"No more I will," said she.
However, he waited until she was in an excellent condition for keeping
her promise, being fast as a church.
Then he looked long at her beautiful face, wax-like and even-tinted, but
full of life after her meal, and prayed to Him who loved little children,
and went with a beating