Here's your room. Good-night!"

He shepherded me into my bedroom, shut the door on me, and tiptoed away.

I really made a determined effort to go to bed. I actually lay down and covered myself up, but sleep I could not. After an hour of conscientious endeavour I rose, inspired with a new idea.

The doctor had straitly forbidden me to enter Phillis's room; but opening out of it was the apartment that was used as her nursery. There would be a fire there: I would spend the rest of the night on a sofa in front of it.

I looked at my watch. It was one o'clock. I took a candle, walked softly down the passage, and let myself quietly into the nursery. The door leading into Phillis's room was ajar, and a slight smell of some drug or disinfectant assailed my sharpened senses.

The room was in darkness, except that a good fire burned in the grate. A silent figure rose up from before it at my entrance.

It was Robin. Somehow I was not in the least surprised to see him there.

"Come along," he said softly. "I was expecting you."

We sat there for the rest of the long night. The house was very still, but every quarter of an hour the Cathedral chimes across the Close--our rooms lay in a quiet wing of the hotel, which formed a hollow square with the Cathedral, Chapter-house, and Canonries--furnished a musical break in the silence. So tensely mechanical does one's brain become under such circumstances, that presently I found myself anticipating the exact moment when the next quarter would strike; and I remember feeling quite disappointed and irritable if, when I said to myself _"Now!"_ the chime did not ring out for another fifteen seconds or so. Truly, at three o'clock on a sleepless morning the grasshopper is a burden.

Once Robin rose softly to his feet and turned towards the door of Phillis's room. I had not heard any one move there, but when I looked round Dolly was standing on the threshold. She was wrapped in a kimono,--I remember its exact colour and pattern to this day, and the curious manner in which the heraldic-looking animals embroidered upon it winked at me in the firelight,--and she held an incongruous-looking coal-scuttle in her hand. It was not by any means empty, but she handed it to Robin with a little nod of authority and vanished again.

I looked listlessly at Robin, wondering what he was to do with the coal-scuttle. He began to cut a newspaper into strips, after which he picked suitable lumps of coal out of the scuttle and tied them up into neat little paper packets, half a dozen of which he presently handed through the door to Dolly. I suppose she placed them noiselessly on the fire in Phillis's room, but we heard no sound.

It was a bitterly cold night, and outside the snow was lying thick; so Robin busied himself with preparing other little packets of coal, and at intervals throughout the long night he passed them through the door to the tireless Dolly.

Various sounds came from within. Occasionally the child suffered spasms of pain, and we could hear her crying. Then all-wise Nature would grant the sorely tried little body a rest at the expense of the mind that ruled it, and poor Phillis would drop into a sort of rambling delirium, through which we perforce accompanied her. At one time she would be wandering through some Elysian field of her own; we heard her calling her mates and proposing all manner of attractive games. (Even "Beckoning" was included. Once I distinctly heard her "choose" me.) But more often she was in deadly fear. Her solitary little spirit was too plainly beset by those nameless ghosts that haunt the borderland separating the realms of Death from those of his brother Sleep. Once her voice rose to a scream.

"Uncle Robin! It's the Kelpie! Stop it! It's coming--it's breaving on me! Uncle _Robin_! oh----!"

I looked at Robin. He was sitting gripping the arms of his chair, with every muscle in his body rigid; and I knew that he, like myself, was praying God to strike down the cowardly devil that would torment a child.

Then I heard, for the first time that night, the soothing murmur of Kitty's voice.

"It's all right, dearie. Mother is holding you fast. It shan't hurt you.

There, it's running away now, isn't it? See!"

Kitty's tones would have lightened the torments of the Pit, and Phillis's cries presently died down to an uneasy whisper. After a sudden and curiously pathetic little outburst of singing,--chiefly a jumble of scraps from such old favourites as "Onward, Christian _Sailors_!"--there was silence again, and the Cathedral chimed out half-past four.

Shortly after this the doctor came out of the room with a message from Kitty that I ought to be in bed. Evidently Dolly had told her about me.

"How is she now, doctor?" I whispered, disregarding the command.

"Up and down, up and down. She is making a brave fight of it, poor lassie, but we can do little at present except stand by and give relief when the bad fits come."

"May I go in and see her?"

"No, no! You could do no good, and she might be frightened if she caught sight of a large dim figure in the dark. Leave it to the women, and thank God for them. Hark!"

Phillis was back in Elysium again.

"Who's been eating my porridge?" said a gruff little voice. Then came a rapturous shriek. Evidently the Little Bear had caught Curly Locks in his bed. We sat listening, while the game ended and another followed in its place. Suddenly she began to sing again--

"Then three times round went that gallant ship, And three times round went she; Then three times round went that gallant ship, And--sank--to the--bottom of the sea--ea--ee--"

There was a little wailing _rallentando_, and silence.

"Philly, Philly, _don't_!" It was the only time that night that Kitty gave any sign of breaking down. The doctor hurried back into the room.

The clock struck five.

After that there was a very long silence. It must have lasted nearly an hour. Then Dolly tiptoed out to us.

"She's asleep," she whispered. "He says she's a shade better. I want another coal-packet."

She took what Robin gave her, and faded away.

After that I think we dozed in our chairs. The next thing I remember was a knock at the outer door. I opened my heavy eyes and stirred my stiff joints. The Boots put his head in, and I realised it was daylight.

"Half-past eight, sir. Mr Cash is waiting downstairs. Poll's been open half an hour, he says."

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

TWO BATTLES.

Before I left the hotel I struck a bargain with Cash. I would go anywhere and do anything, but he was to give me a written itinerary of my movements for the day, clearly stating where I should be at various times. This document I left in the hands of Dolly, who promised faithfully to send for me, if--if necessary.

Then, putting my paternal instincts into my pocket, I braced myself up and plunged into the vortex of polling-day.

Truly, if Time is the healer, Work is the anesthetic. In the turmoil of the crowded streets and polling-booths, I found myself almost as enthusiastic and whole-hearted as if no little girl of mine were fighting for life in a darkened room not many streets away. I shook hands with countless folk, I addressed meetings of the unwashed at street corners, and received the plaudits or execrations of the multitude with equal serenity.

Robin hastened away to the Hide-and-Tallow Works, whence, during the dinner-hour, he charmed many an oleaginous elector to come and plump for Inglethwaite, the Man Whom He Knew and Who Knew Him. Gerald and Donkin, smothered in violets and primroses, were personally conducting a sort of tumbril, which dashed across my field of vision from time to time, sometimes full, sometimes empty, but always at full gallop.

Election "incidents" were plentiful. I was standing in the principal polling-station at one time, when a gentleman called Hoppett, a cobbler by persuasion--I think I have already mentioned him as the benignant individual who used to come to the door of his establishment and pursue me with curses down the street--came out from recording his vote. He did not see me, but caught sight of Robin, who had just arrived with a _posse_ of electors, and was standing by the Returning Officer's table.

Hobbling up, the cobbler shook a gnarled fist under my secretary's nose.

"I've voted against your man," he shouted. "We're goin' to be rid of the lot of you this time. Set of reskils!... I've put my mark against Stridge, I have; and against Inglethwaite's name I've put a picture of a big boot--one of my own making, too! The big boot!" he screamed ecstatically--"that's what your man is a-going to get to-day. Set of----"

Robin smiled benignantly upon him, and glanced at the Returning Officer.

"You hear what this gentleman says?" he remarked.

"I do," replied the official.

"Is it not a fact that he has annulled his vote by making unnecessary marks on his voting-paper?" continued Robin solemnly.