Charlotte looked at her swiftly, and then turned away, blinking her eyes furiously; and the head girl took her arm with astonishing condescension, and walked silently into the cloakroom with her.

A little later, Dr. Hurst came out of Miss Finlayson's bedroom upstairs, and closed the door softly behind him. The head-mistress stood waiting for him on the landing. Their eyes met, and hers were full of anxious inquiry. In his there shone a gleam of something that had not been there before.

'Better,' he said, and drew a long breath. He put his hand on the bal.u.s.ter-rail to steady himself. 'She'll do, now that consciousness has returned,' he went on in a businesslike tone; 'the concussion was only slight, after all, and the fracture to the leg could hardly be in a better place. Wonderful what children will do to kill themselves without succeeding! She'll pull through in no time, with rest and quiet--perfect quiet, mind! Don't let those boys go near her, whatever you do; and keep your girls from weeping on her neck as much as possible. Good morning.'

Miss Finlayson smiled, and retained his hand a moment. No one would have thought that this practical man of medicine, who pretended to regard his little patient merely as an interesting case, was the boyish-hearted fellow who had sat by her bedside all night to watch for her returning consciousness.

'Must you go?' she said. 'Why not rest on the sofa in my study for an hour, and stay to lunch with us? You must be worn out.'

The Doctor drew himself up and frowned. 'Not at all, not at all!' he said, looking vexed. 'Room full of patients waiting for me at home--I must wish you good morning.'

[Ill.u.s.tration: 'Tell me, Herr Doktor, haf I kilt her?']

He left her and hurried off, still frowning. Just as he turned the corner of the gallery, Egbert and Peter, who had been lying in wait for him some fifteen minutes, sprang out upon him from an open door.

'How is she?' they asked eagerly.

'Really!' fumed the Doctor, who hated being taken by surprise. 'The bulletin is with Miss Finlayson; I have no time----'

Peter grasped his arm as he was escaping. 'Is she going to get better?'

he implored. There was no mistaking the earnestness in the boy's face, and the Doctor melted in spite of himself.

'Yes, yes, to be sure,' he growled. 'That is, if you leave her alone.'

When he reached the staircase he was again brought to a standstill. The way was entirely blocked by the ma.s.sive form of the German music-master, who sat on the top stair with his face buried in his large, fat hands.

The Doctor tapped his foot on the ground impatiently. If one thing more than another annoyed him, it was the sight of uncontrolled emotion.

'Pardon me,' he said briskly, 'but will you kindly----'

'_Gott in Himmel!_' shouted Herr Scales, springing to his feet as he recognised the Doctor's voice. 'Tell me, Herr Doktor, haf I kilt her? Am I a murterer of the _lieblichste_ little Fraulein that ever walked upon----'

'Nonsense, sir!' interrupted Dr. Hurst, doing his best to keep his temper.

The sight of the tears that streamed down the good-natured face of the music-master was enough, he told himself, to annoy any man who was not a foreigner. 'n.o.body has killed her yet; but what you are going to do, among you, before you have done with her, I shouldn't like to say.'

'You do not understand,' wept Herr Scales, clasping his hands. 'It was I who nearly kilt her, _dummer_ wretch that I am.'

'Well, you haven't killed her, my good sir, and she's going to get better,' answered the Doctor, trying to deal gently with him in spite of his irritating foreign behaviour. Then he left him and went quickly down the stairs.

Two more voices a.s.sailed him in the hall, as he took down his coat from the peg. Restraining his impatience as best he might, the young man looked round to find Kit and Wilfred at his elbow. Curled up on the rug in front of the stove lay Robin, fast asleep, with his head pillowed on a footstool. Weariness and the shedding of many tears had left their mark on his round, babyish face, and the elder boys looked little more than half-awake themselves. Kit's face was tear-stained too, and he suddenly found he could not put the question he was longing to ask. It was Wilfred who blurted it out instead.

'Is she better?' he asked.

The Doctor had been up all night; he had gone through more anxiety than he could have believed himself capable of feeling; he had found that his heart had gone out unconsciously, eleven weeks ago, to the child who had called him a beast; and he felt that all the glory his profession could bring him was not worth so much as the saving of that one little life upstairs. And then people came and bothered him with their senseless questions. If she were worse, was it likely he would be leaving her now?

He was worn out with want of sleep, and it did not occur to him that the same thing might possibly be true of the white-faced lads before him.

'Bless my soul!' he exclaimed testily. 'How many _are_ there of you?

There's a couple at every corner. How can you expect your sister to get better if you hang about the place and ask questions at the top of your voice? There's--there's an atmosphere of nervous sentiment all over the house that's enough to ruin any case.'

Wilfred was dumbfounded, and stared stupidly. But Christopher suddenly found his tongue, and, being Christopher, he found it sarcastically.

'Counting Jill, there are only six all together,' he said, peering up at the irritated young man through his spectacles, 'so you won't meet any more.'

'I don't care how many there are of you,' grumbled Dr. Hurst, flinging on his coat. 'Keep out of her way, that's all--and mine too.'

'You may be sure we'll do that, if we can,' retorted Wilfred, recovering his courage. 'Only, you haven't told us yet how she is.'

'You seem to forget she's our sister, and we're beastly cut up about her,'

added Kit, glumly.

'She's not a rotten bacteria, either,' said Wilfred, in a vicious undertone which the Doctor fortunately missed.

Dr. Hurst felt a little bit ashamed of himself, and was more cross than ever. 'There, there! She's better, of course,' he muttered, pushing past his questioners. Then he saw the sleeping Robin curled up in front of the stove, and he glanced back at the tired faces of the other two. 'Best thing you can do is to go straight to bed,' he advised, jamming his hat down on his head. 'Best thing for the case, too.'

Kit smiled at him indulgently. 'Let them go to bed who have beds,' he remarked. 'I've only got an arm-chair.'

The Doctor fled discomfited, and shut the front door in their faces. He did not understand boys, and he did not like them, and he would not have minded if he had never had to meet another boy as long as he lived. In a very few moments, however, he came to the conclusion that although boys were pretty bad, girls could beat them easily, with several points to spare.

His man was walking the cob up and down outside, and the trap was not in sight when Dr. Hurst shut the front door behind him. The occurrence was particularly unfortunate, for as he stood waiting on the steps the whole of the junior hockey team came strolling round the corner of the house.

This in itself was sufficiently embarra.s.sing to the young man who stood there; and he hailed the appearance of his trap with deep and earnest satisfaction. But he was not to be allowed to escape so easily. The sound of wheels made the children look round; and some one suddenly called out--'It's the Doctor!' The next moment he found himself, greatly to his consternation, in the middle of a throng of excited young ladies, all in extremely short skirts and all armed with hockey clubs, who were clamouring loudly and persistently to know if Barbara Berkeley was out of danger.

Probably it would never have happened if it had not been the last day of the term, when a sense of unusual liberty prevailed. Certainly, if it had been any other day the hockey team would not have been wandering round by the front door at all, but would have gone straight to the nine-acre field through the orchard at the back. But the Doctor knew nothing of all this. He only realised that the girls were finishing what the boys had begun, and that in another minute he should lose his temper very badly indeed.

Most eager of all was a child with a freckled face and reddish-coloured hair, who somehow seemed familiar to him, though he could not remember where he had met her before. She came right up to where he stood helplessly, with his right foot placed on the carriage-step; and she raised her voice shrilly above all the others.

'May I see her before she gets worse?' she implored sentimentally. 'I should never forgive myself, Mary Wells says I shouldn't, if anything happened to her, and----'

The Doctor made a great effort and waved them off distractedly, just as Margaret Hulme and some of the elder ones hurried on the scene and called angrily to his tormentors. He seized the opportunity to spring to his seat, and then turned and glared at them.

'See her before she gets worse?' he answered back furiously. 'If you want to see her before you've done your best to finish her altogether, you'll have to look sharp.'

Miss Finlayson suddenly appeared on the doorstep. n.o.body knew how much she had seen or heard, but she was looking exceedingly stern. She opened her mouth to speak, just as Dr. Hurst perceived her and broke into a fresh torrent of words. By this time he had lost the last sc.r.a.p of his patience.

'What with rascally boys and hysterical _schoolgirls_,' he shouted, seizing the whip and cracking it round his head, 'how can you expect me to pull the case through?'

He tugged violently at the reins; the startled animal sprang forward, and the trap clattered noisily out of sight.

The few short, vigorous sentences with which Miss Finlayson improved the next five minutes sent the girls into the hockey field with a much reduced opinion of themselves. Margaret Hulme stayed behind to vindicate the offenders as well as she could; and the result was that the head-mistress remembered it was the last day of the term, and blamed herself for having almost allowed her feelings for the youngest girl in school to run away with her.

'Send Jean and Angela up to my bedroom at once,' she said thoughtfully, when Margaret had finished telling her what had been going on in the playroom that morning.

She waited for them on the landing, and kissed them both very affectionately when they appeared hand in hand. She glanced quickly from Angela's red and swollen countenance to Jean's pale and miserable one, and she decided not to say what had been in her mind the minute before. A much better idea struck her, and she acted upon it promptly.

'If you will promise me to be as quiet as mice,' she whispered, 'you shall both have one peep at her.'

The room into which she led them on tiptoe was almost dark. The only light that was admitted came from one small window in the farther corner, and it was just enough to reveal Jill, as she bent over the bed with a cup in her hand. Then she moved away, and the two children, peeping from their hiding-place behind the screen by the door, saw Barbara.

She lay flat on her back among the white pillows; a hillock under the bedclothes showed where the cage protected her broken leg, and a bandage round her head kept the thick, dark hair from tumbling over her face as it usually did. Otherwise, she was not nearly so much altered as her play-fellows had vaguely expected to find her. The bright little eyes gleamed out as impishly as ever from beneath the white bandage, and as she smiled up at Jill they realised to their intense relief that the Babe, with a hole in her head and a cage over her leg, was much the same Babe who had arrived in their midst, with her elf-like look and her happy unconscious smile, three months ago.