and yellin’ mo’ than ever.” …
Mimi, frightened as she was, remained calm.
“While I take him up to my room, will you get Dr. Newton?” she asked. She knew him by sight, having seen him at church often when she had gone there with the Mannings. His name came instantly to her, for she had been told many times of his eminence among the coloured physicians of Philadelphia. He came at once, trim, alert, intelligent. His brown face was a mask as he asked questions and examined Jean. Long brown fingers probed the baby’s abdomen, methodically, confidently he measured pulse and temperature. Coolly he recited the symptoms as he found them:
“… vomiting, at first contents of stomach, then bilious … collapse … pallor … feeble pulse … temperature normal … abdomen relaxed … increasing prostration … rising temperature … tumour, sausage-shaped, curving …” He turned to Mimi. “What’s been done for him?” Mimi told him of the doctor called by Mrs. Williams, of the administration of castor oil.