It was only stopped by that stuff I smelled out in the entry." She could not reason back of that; her terror and misery brought her up against a dead wall.

It seemed to her presently that she heard a faint cry from her mother's room, then she was quite sure that she smelled that strange, sweet smell even through her closed door.

Then her father opened her door abruptly, and a great whiff of it entered with him, like some ghost of pain and death.
"The doctors have neither of them had any breakfast, and they can't leave her," he said, with a jerk of his elbow, and speaking still with that angry tone towards the unoffending child.

"Can you make coffee ?" "I don't know how." "Good for nothing!" said her father, and shut the door with a subdued bang.
Maria heard him going down-stairs, and presently she heard a rattle in the kitchen, a part of which was under her room.

She went out herself and stole softly down the stairs.