As soon as she
could command her tongue she said:
"It is all over! All over! The child's perspiring! What shall we do?"
"Mercy, how you terrify me! I don't know what we ought to do. Maybe if
we scraped her and put her in the draft again--"
"Oh, idiot! There is not a moment to lose! Go for the doctor.
Go yourself. Tell him he must come, dead or alive."
I dragged that poor sick man from his bed and brought him. He looked at
the child and said she was not dying. This was joy unspeakable to me,
but it made my wife as mad as if he had offered her a personal affront.
Then he said the child's cough was only caused by some trifling
irritation or other in the throat. At this I thought my wife had a mind
to show him the door. Now the doctor said he would make the child cough
harder and dislodge the trouble. So he gave her something that sent her
into a spasm of coughing, and presently up came a little wood splinter or
so.
"This child has no membranous croup," said he. "She has been chewing a
bit of pine shingle or something of the kind, and got some little slivers
in her throat. They won't do her any hurt."
"No," said I, "I can well believe that.
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