"Yes, I saw him," she replied, her voice rather fainter than usual, while some of the fine colour died out of her cheeks.

"His is a most interesting and unusual case," went on Mr. Wallis. "He is one of our very rich men now, and the funny part of it is that he declares he owes all his prosperity to the loss of his limb, which, but for a mistake of the doctor's, he need not have lost at all."

"What do you mean?" she asked, stopping short in the path and staring at him with parted lips, her face so ghastly white that he asked her anxiously if she felt ill.

"No, no, it is nothing, thank you, but I want to hear about that man. It sounds most awfully interesting; and won't you tell me what his name is?" she said, turning such a wistful gaze upon him, that it seemed to him there must have been some sorrow in her life, although she laughed in such a cheery, lighthearted way as a rule.

"Reginald Baxter. He is English, and came out to this country about six or seven years ago. His people are very aristocratic, but poor as church mice, and they were so terribly upset at his disaster they practically cast him off; but he seems to have no false pride himself and no unnecessary notions of his own importance; but he is a veritable king of finance----"

"What is that?" demanded Don; but Billykins was watching Nealie with a close scrutiny, and he had his fists clenched tightly as if he were meditating some sort of revenge upon the innocent Mr. Wallis for the pain he was giving her in talking about the one-armed man.

"A king of finance is a man who has a natural gift for managing money and making it increase. I should not wonder if you develop a cleverness in that way yourself when you are a little older," said Mr. Wallis, who was a keen student of human nature and had already amused himself by mentally forecasting the future of the seven.

"Perhaps I shall," answered Don stolidly. "Anyhow I don't mean to be poor when I grow up, for I shall just go without things until I get a lot of money saved, and Mr. Runciman used to say that money made money, and if a man could save one hundred pounds the next hundred would save itself."

"Well done, Mr. Runciman, that is sound philosophy!" said Mr. Wallis, and was going to expound the art of money making still further when there came a sudden interruption from Billykins.

"Can't you talk about something else, please? You have made Nealie cry by going on so about that one-armed man. She never can bear to talk about them, and you didn't see that she did not like it," he said in a shrill and very aggrieved tone.

"Miss Plumstead, I am truly sorry. I had no idea that I was saying anything to pain you. Please forgive me!" said Mr. Wallis in a shocked tone, for Nealie's face was covered with her handkerchief, and by the heave of her shoulders it was easy to see that she was crying bitterly.

"Oh, it is nothing, quite nothing, and I am very silly!" she said nervously. "But somehow I never can bear to see men who have lost their limbs. It is so sad and hopeless, because, of course, they can never be the same again, and life must be so very sad."

Mr. Wallis laughed in a cheerful manner. "I don't think that you would consider Reginald Baxter a very sad man if you knew him. As I said before, he looks upon the loss of his arm as his entrance into freedom, and it would be hard to find a happier man, I should think. But let us go in and find some tea, and think no more about such matters."

Tea was such a merry function that no one had much time to notice that there was something wrong with Nealie, although she was so very quiet that Rupert asked her once if she did not feel well.

"Oh yes, I am quite well, thank you; only perhaps a little tired," she replied, smiling at him in a rather wistful fashion; and then, as Sylvia claimed his attention, he forgot about it, and there was so much to see and to hear, with so many details of to-morrow's journey to discuss, that it is not wonderful he did not even remember Nealie had said she was tired.

Later in the evening, when they were back at the hotel, the younger ones had gone to bed, and Mr. Wallis had gone away after bidding them a most affectionate good night, Nealie said abruptly: "There is something you ought to know, Rupert, that I have always hated to tell you."

"Then don't tell it," put in Sylvia lazily. "I think that half the misery of the world comes through having to do unpleasant things, such as going to bed when you want to sit up, and in having to get up by candlelight on a dark morning in winter when you would far rather take your breakfast in bed."

"What is it? A trouble of some sort?" asked Rupert, with a start, for he was remembering Nealie's low spirits at teatime and wondering where the trouble came in.

"Yes," said Nealie shortly, and then hesitated as if not sure where to begin.

"Well, you can enjoy it together, if it must be told, but I am going to bed, for it seems to me almost like a sacrilege to spoil such a beautiful day as this has been with even a hint of anything unpleasant,"

said Sylvia, getting out of her easy chair in a great hurry. Then she said in quite a pathetic tone, as she kissed Rupert: "I wonder when we shall have easy chairs to sit in again; don't you?"

"I don't see that it matters very much; I am not gone on that sort of thing myself," he replied briefly; and then he turned to Nealie, asking in a tone of grave concern, as Sylvia hurried away to bed: "Is it anything about Father, Nealie?"

"Yes," she said faintly. "That is to say, it is about the trouble that came before Ducky was born; you remember it?"

"I never knew more about it than that he made a mistake, some medical blunder, for which he would have to live more or less under a cloud for the remainder of his professional life. I thought it was all that any of us knew, and Aunt Judith hated to have it mentioned." Rupert's tone was fairly aggressive now, for he was quite abnormally sensitive on this subject of his father's disgrace, which had indirectly cost his mother her life and had plunged the family into poverty, and bereft them of their father also.

"Mrs. Puffin told me all about it one day soon after Aunt Judith was taken ill," said Nealie, her voice quivering now with emotion, for it was terrible to her to have to talk of this thing which had thrown such a shadow over their lives.

"How did she know?" demanded Rupert hotly, thinking how hateful it was that a servant should know more about their private skeleton than they knew themselves.

"Aunt Judith told her," replied Nealie; and then she burst out hotly: "But indeed there is nothing to look so shocked about in the affair, Rupert. If Father did make a mistake, it was not so serious as it might have been; and I think that it was altogether wrong to hush it up as it has been. There are some things which are all the better for being told, and I am quite sure that this is one of them."

"What do you mean?" he asked hoa.r.s.ely. "I should think that a mistake of that kind should be buried as deep as possible, for who would be likely to trust a doctor who might make blunders that might cost a man his life?"

"It was not a life-or-death blunder in that sense, but only one of maiming," said Nealie hastily. "Father wanted to take off a man's arm to save his life; but the family, and I suppose the man himself, would not hear of it, for the man was heir to someone's property, an awful pile it was; and the someone--she was a woman--said that her money should never go to a man who was maimed. So of course the man's family would not hear of it, and they would not have another doctor called in either; and things went on, the poor man getting worse and worse, until one day Father declared that he would throw up the case, because he would not be responsible for the man's life. Then the man said that it could be taken off if Father liked, only it must be done without his people knowing anything about it, which was easy enough, seeing that he was being nursed at his lodgings. Father sent for another doctor to come and administer the chloroform, and he performed the operation himself, as the man was too bad to be moved eight miles to the nearest hospital.

There was a frightful week after that, when Father simply gave up everything to pull the poor fellow through. He did it too, and the relatives did not know until he was out of danger that the arm had been amputated."

"Whew, what a story!" said Rupert, mopping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in great beads. "I think that Father was a hero, because he acted up to his principle--the true doctor principle--of saving life at no matter what cost to himself. But I don't mind admitting, now that I know the truth, that I have always been afraid of hearing that story, because I had got the impression that there was something really disgraceful behind."

"Poor Father has had to suffer as bitterly as if he had made the most ghastly blunder imaginable," said Nealie sadly. "The man's people had a lot of influence, although they were not really wealthy, and when they found out that the arm had been taken off they simply hounded Father down as if he were a criminal. He was boycotted in every direction, and in the end he had to get out of his practice in a hurry. Then Ducky was born, and Mother died; and there would have been no home for us at all if Aunt Judith had not opened her house to take us in."

"Poor Father!" murmured Rupert, and then he thrust his hands deep in his pockets, and sat staring at the floor, frowning his blackest, until, a sudden thought striking him, he sat up straight, and asked abruptly: "What made you dig all that up to-day, after keeping it to yourself so long?"

"Because I met the man whose arm Father cut off," replied Nealie quietly.

"You did? Where?" demanded Rupert savagely, and looking as if he would like to go and have it out with the man there and then.

"A one-armed man pa.s.sed us in the Botanical Gardens, and Mr. Wallis told me that a doctor had cut off his arm by mistake, and that the man's name was Reginald Baxter; then I knew that it must be the man on whose account Father had to suffer so badly."

"Did he--did he look very poor?" asked Rupert in a hesitating manner; for if the man had to lose his inheritance as a penalty for losing his arm, it did seem as if the poor fellow should be pitied.

"He looked as well off as other people, that is to say, he was dressed in an ordinary way; but Mr. Wallis told me that he was one of the richest men in the city--a king of finance, he said he was," replied Nealie.

Rupert gave a long whistle, and then rose to his feet, yawning widely.

"So Father didn't balk the business so badly after all!" he said, and then went to bed.

CHAPTER VIII

The Start

"I say that this is just ripping!" cried Rumple joyously.

He was sitting under the tilt of a light wagon with Rupert, the two small boys, and Ducky, while Nealie and Sylvia occupied the post of honour in front, and guided the steps of the big horse which was to draw the wagon to Hammerville.

Nealie held reins and whip in quite a professional style, and if she was nervous she took good care to say nothing about it. She had, before starting from the yards of Messrs. Peek & Wallis, ably demonstrated her ability to manage a horse by unharnessing this very animal and leading it into the stable. Then leading it out again she had harnessed it with her own hands, backed it carefully into the shafts, and finished the processes of hitching to in a smart and workmanlike manner.

The others wanted to a.s.sist her; but as she had to take the responsibility, and sign the books of the company, she preferred to do the whole thing herself, although she promised that one or more of them should always help her at the harnessing and unharnessing when they were on the journey.

"Yes, it is ripping!" echoed Sylvia. "But do you know, I was simply shaking with nervousness when Nealie was harnessing, for I was so afraid that she would make some awful blunder, and that they would refuse to let us have the horse and wagon, for I knew that I could not have stood the test as she did; and then, too, these colonial horses seem to have such a good opinion of themselves, and they carry their heads with a swagger that is entirely different from the meek, downtrodden air of the Turpins, and Smilers, and Sharpers of the old country; and their names are as b.u.mptious as themselves. Fancy a horse being named Rockefeller! I vote that we call the dear creature Rocky for short. What do you say?"

"Not a bad idea!" cried Nealie, who was flushed and triumphant at having pa.s.sed the test imposed on her by Mr. Wallis before he would allow her to take the responsibility of the horse and wagon. Rupert's lameness had been the bar to his being in charge, and if Nealie, or, failing her, Sylvia, had been unable to harness and unharness without danger to themselves, then it would have been necessary to send a driver with them, which would not merely have added to the expense, but would have imposed a most uncomfortable restraint upon them.

Mr. Wallis had sent a reliable man to see them clear of the city and beyond the area of the electric trams; then, once out in the country, and provided with a map of the route to be traversed, the driver bade them good morning, and they were absolutely on their own.

"I wonder how far we shall get to-night?" said Rupert, who was in charge of the map, and had been promptly nicknamed the "route boss" by the others.