midnight
How 's things with you ? '' Phillida returned this with the slightest good-morning . She was out of patience with Mr. Martin , and she was revolving a plan for discovering whether Tommy 's distemper were diphtheria or not . During her long midnight meditations she had gone over every word of Dr. Beswick 's about bacteria and bacilli . She remembered his statement that the _ micrococcus diphtheriticus _ was to be found in the light-colored patches visible in the throat of a diphtheria patient . At what stage these were developed she did not know , but during her hours of waiting for morning she had imagined herself looking down little Tommy 's throat . She now asked for a spoon , and , having roused Tommy from a kind of stupor , she inserted the handle as she had seen physicians do , and at length succeeded in pressing down the tongue so as to discover what she took to be diphtheria patches on the fauces .