I have only the most confused picture of what went on after that. I know that as Mara slipped unconscious to the floor Dr. Birdsong cleared the room in two strides, picked her up and laid her on the sofa between the windows. And almost immediately—it seemed to me almost as if they’d been crowding the wings for some monstrous grand finale—everyone was there: Major Tillyard first, groping, desperately shaken, toward the figure huddled silently on the hearth. And Dr. Birdsong was back, keeping him from her, holding off all the others—Natalie, Mr. Dunthorne, the maid Anna and the old cook, and Dan, in the hyphen door, and in the garden door Mrs. Jellyby and the stable boy Jim and Mr. Keane.
He turned to me, his voice crackling. “Get Purcell on the phone.—Mrs. Jellyby, have Jim put Yarborough
