eight o'clock
He found the nursemaid up and waiting for him . Phoebe had a `` dreadful throat '' and a high temperature . It had come on very suddenly , it seems , and if Annie 's memory served her right it was just the way diphtheria began . The little girl had been thrashing about in the bed and whimpering for `` daddy '' since eight o'clock . His heart sank like lead , to a far deeper level than it had dropped with the base desertion of Butler . Filled with remorse , he ran upstairs without taking off his hat or overcoat . The feeling of resentment toward Butler was lost in this new , overpowering sense of dread ; the discovery of his own lamentable unfitness for `` high life '' expeditions faded into nothingness in the face of this possible catastrophe .