`` Then , the third night after father and mother went away , Jims suddenly got worse -- oh , so much worse -- all at once . Susan and I were all alone . Gertrude had been at Lowbridge when the storm began and had never got back . At first we were not much alarmed . Jims has had several bouts of croup and Susan and Morgan and I have always brought him through without much trouble . But it was n't very long before we were dreadfully alarmed . '' ' I never saw croup like this before , ' said Susan . `` As for me , I knew , when it was too late , what kind of croup it was . I knew it was not the ordinary croup -- ` false croup ' as doctors call it -- but the ` true croup ' -- and I knew that it was a deadly and dangerous thing . And father was away and there was no doctor nearer than Lowbridge -- and we could not ` phone and neither horse nor man could get through the drifts that night . `` Gallant little Jims put up a good fight for his life , -- Susan and I tried every remedy we could think of or find in father 's books , but he continued to grow worse . It was heart-rending to see and hear him . He gasped so horribly for breath -- the poor little soul -- and his face turned a dreadful bluish colour and had such an agonized expression , and he kept struggling with his little hands , as if he were appealing to us to help him somehow . I found myself thinking that the boys who had been gassed at the front must have looked like that , and the thought haunted me amid all my dread and misery over Jims . And all the time the fatal membrane in his wee throat grew and thickened and he could n't get it up . `` Oh , I was just wild ! I never realized how dear Jims was to me until that moment . And I felt so utterly helpless . '' `` And then Susan gave up . ` We can not save him !
Oh , if your father was here -- look XXXXX him , the poor little fellow !
amid as at before in of that to until with