eight o'clock
Ensconced with it in the lower hall , and milk bottle in hand , she waylaid them with it as they hurried up and down . Upstairs the battle went on . There were times when the paralyzed muscles almost stopped lifting the chest walls , when each breath was a new miracle . Her throat was closing fast , too , and at eight o'clock came a brisk young surgeon , and with Willy Cameron 's assistance , an operation was performed . After that , and for days , Edith breathed through a tube in her neck . The fiction of diphtheria was kept up , and Mrs. Boyd , having a childlike faith in medical men , betrayed no anxiety after the first hour or two . She saw nothing incongruous in Ellen going down through the house while she herself was kept out of that upper room where Edith lay , conscious now but sullen , disfigured , silent .