I wouldn't take it upon me to fetch him up to our place without I asked the Missus first, and they call me the Master, too."

"Are you sure your Mother won't mind?" whispered Jim.

"Certain," said Bobbie.

"Then we're to take him up to Three Chimneys?" said the bailiff.

"Of course," said Peter.

"Then my lad shall nip up to Doctor's on his bike, and tell him to come down there. Now, lads, lift him quiet and steady. One, two, three!"

Thus it happened that Mother, writing away for dear life at a story about a d.u.c.h.ess, a designing villain, a secret pa.s.sage, and a missing will, dropped her pen as her work-room door burst open, and turned to see Bobbie hatless and red with running.

"Oh, Mother," she cried, "do come down. We found a hound in a red jersey in the tunnel, and he's broken his leg and they're bringing him home."

"They ought to take him to the vet," said Mother, with a worried frown; "I really CAN'T have a lame dog here."

"He's not a dog, really--he's a boy," said Bobbie, between laughing and choking.

"Then he ought to be taken home to his mother."

"His mother's dead," said Bobbie, "and his father's in Northumberland.

Oh, Mother, you will be nice to him? I told him I was sure you'd want us to bring him home. You always want to help everybody."

Mother smiled, but she sighed, too. It is nice that your children should believe you willing to open house and heart to any and every one who needs help. But it is rather embarra.s.sing sometimes, too, when they act on their belief.

"Oh, well," said Mother, "we must make the best of it."

When Jim was carried in, dreadfully white and with set lips whose red had faded to a horrid bluey violet colour, Mother said:--

"I am glad you brought him here. Now, Jim, let's get you comfortable in bed before the Doctor comes!"

And Jim, looking at her kind eyes, felt a little, warm, comforting flush of new courage.

"It'll hurt rather, won't it?" he said. "I don't mean to be a coward.

You won't think I'm a coward if I faint again, will you? I really and truly don't do it on purpose. And I do hate to give you all this trouble."

"Don't you worry," said Mother; "it's you that have the trouble, you poor dear--not us."

And she kissed him just as if he had been Peter. "We love to have you here--don't we, Bobbie?"

"Yes," said Bobbie--and she saw by her Mother's face how right she had been to bring home the wounded hound in the red jersey.

Chapter XIII. The hound's grandfather.

Mother did not get back to her writing all that day, for the red-jerseyed hound whom the children had brought to Three Chimneys had to be put to bed. And then the Doctor came, and hurt him most horribly.

Mother was with him all through it, and that made it a little better than it would have been, but "bad was the best," as Mrs. Viney said.

The children sat in the parlour downstairs and heard the sound of the Doctor's boots going backwards and forwards over the bedroom floor. And once or twice there was a groan.

"It's horrible," said Bobbie. "Oh, I wish Dr. Forrest would make haste.

Oh, poor Jim!"

"It IS horrible," said Peter, "but it's very exciting. I wish Doctors weren't so stuck-up about who they'll have in the room when they're doing things. I should most awfully like to see a leg set. I believe the bones crunch like anything."

"Don't!" said the two girls at once.

"Rubbish!" said Peter. "How are you going to be Red Cross Nurses, like you were talking of coming home, if you can't even stand hearing me say about bones crunching? You'd have to HEAR them crunch on the field of battle--and be steeped in gore up to the elbows as likely as not, and--"

"Stop it!" cried Bobbie, with a white face; "you don't know how funny you're making me feel."

"Me, too," said Phyllis, whose face was pink.

"Cowards!" said Peter.

"I'm not," said Bobbie. "I helped Mother with your rake-wounded foot, and so did Phil--you know we did."

"Well, then!" said Peter. "Now look here. It would be a jolly good thing for you if I were to talk to you every day for half an hour about broken bones and people's insides, so as to get you used to it."

A chair was moved above.

"Listen," said Peter, "that's the bone crunching."

"I do wish you wouldn't," said Phyllis. "Bobbie doesn't like it."

"I'll tell you what they do," said Peter. I can't think what made him so horrid. Perhaps it was because he had been so very nice and kind all the earlier part of the day, and now he had to have a change. This is called reaction. One notices it now and then in oneself. Sometimes when one has been extra good for a longer time than usual, one is suddenly attacked by a violent fit of not being good at all. "I'll tell you what they do,"

said Peter; "they strap the broken man down so that he can't resist or interfere with their doctorish designs, and then someone holds his head, and someone holds his leg--the broken one, and pulls it till the bones fit in--with a crunch, mind you! Then they strap it up and--let's play at bone-setting!"

"Oh, no!" said Phyllis.

But Bobbie said suddenly: "All right--LET'S! I'll be the doctor, and Phil can be the nurse. You can be the broken b.o.n.e.r; we can get at your legs more easily, because you don't wear petticoats."

"I'll get the splints and bandages," said Peter; "you get the couch of suffering ready."

The ropes that had tied up the boxes that had come from home were all in a wooden packing-case in the cellar. When Peter brought in a trailing tangle of them, and two boards for splints, Phyllis was excitedly giggling.

"Now, then," he said, and lay down on the settle, groaning most grievously.

"Not so loud!" said Bobbie, beginning to wind the rope round him and the settle. "You pull, Phil."

"Not so tight," moaned Peter. "You'll break my other leg."

Bobbie worked on in silence, winding more and more rope round him.