Winifred crouched down, with her child of six in her lap, to examine the knee. Egbert bent over also.
'Don't make such a noise, Joyce,' he said irritably. 'How did she do it?'
'She fell on that sickle thing which you left lying about after cutting the grass,' said Winifred, looking into his face with bitter accusation as he bent near.
He had taken his handkerchief and tied it round the knee. Then he lifted the still sobbing child in his arms, and carried her into the house and upstairs to her bed. In his arms she became quiet. But his heart was burning with pain and with guilt. He had left the sickle there lying on the edge of the grass, and so his first-born child whom he loved so dearly had come to hurt. But then it was an accident—it was an accident. Why should he feel guilty? It would probably be nothing, better in two or three days. Why take it to heart, why worry? He put it aside.
The child lay on the bed in her little summer frock, her face very white now after the shock, Nurse had come carrying the youngest child: and little Annabel stood holding her skirt. Winifred, terribly serious and wooden-seeming, was bending over the knee, from which she had taken his blood-soaked handkerchief. Egbert bent forward, too, keeping more sangfroid in his face than in his heart. Winifred went all of a lump of seriousness, so he had to keep some reserve. The child moaned and whimpered.
The knee was still bleeding profusely—it was a deep cut right in the joint.
'You'd better go for the doctor, Egbert,' said Winifred bitterly.
'Oh, no! Oh, no!' cried Joyce in a panic.
'Joyce, my darling, don't cry!' said Winifred, suddenly catching the little girl to her breast in a strange tragic anguish, the Mater Dolorata. Even the child was frightened into silence. Egbert looked at the tragic figure of his wife with the child at her breast, and turned away. Only Annabel started suddenly to cry: 'Joycey, Joycey, don't have your leg bleeding!'
Egbert rode four miles to the village for the doctor. He could not help feeling that Winifred was laying it on rather. Surely the knee itself wasn't hurt! Surely not. It was only a surface cut.
The doctor was out. Egbert left the message and came cycling swiftly home, his heart pinched with anxiety. He dropped sweating off his bicycle and went into the house, looking rather small, like a man who is at fault. Winifred was upstairs sitting by Joyce, who was looking pale and important in bed, and was eating some tapioca pudding. The pale, small, scared face of his child went to Egbert's heart.
'Doctor Wing was out. He'll be here about half past two,' said Egbert.
'I don't want him to come,' whimpered Joyce.
'Joyce, dear, you must be patient and quiet,' said Winifred. 'He won't hurt you. But he will tell us what to do to make your knee better quickly. That is why he must come.'
Winifred always explained carefully to her little girls: and it always took the words off their lips for the moment.
'Does it bleed yet?' said Egbert.
Winifred moved the bedclothes carefully aside.
'I think not,' she said.
Egbert stooped also to look.
'No, it doesn't,' she said. Then he stood up with a relieved look on his face. He turned to the child.
'Eat your pudding, Joyce,' he said. 'It won't be anything. You've only got to keep still for a few days.'
'You haven't had your dinner, have you, Daddy?'
'Not yet.'
'Nurse will give it to you,' said Winifred.
'You'll be all right, Joyce,' he said, smiling to the child and pushing the blonde hair off her brow. She smiled back winsomely into his face.
He went downstairs and ate his meal alone. Nurse served him. She liked waiting on him. All women liked him and liked to do things for him.
The doctor came—a fat country practitioner, pleasant and kind.
'What, little girl, been tumbling down, have you? There's a thing to be doing, for a smart little lady like you! What! And cutting your knee! Tut-tut-tut! That wasn't clever of you, now was it? Never mind, never mind, soon be better. Let us look at it. Won't hurt you. Not the least in life. Bring a bowl with a little warm water, nurse. Soon have it all right again, soon have it all right.'
Joyce smiled at him with a pale smile of faint superiority. This was not the way in which she was used to being talked to.
He bent down, carefully looking at the little, thin, wounded knee of the child. Egbert bent over him.
'Oh, dear, oh, dear! Quite a deep little cut. Nasty little cut. Nasty little cut. But, never mind. Never mind, little lady. We'll soon have it better. Soon have it better, little lady. What's your name?'
'My name is Joyce,' said the child distinctly.
'Oh, really!' he replied. 'Oh, really! Well, that's a fine name too, in my opinion. Joyce, eh?—And how old might Miss Joyce be? Can she tell me that?'
'I'm six,' said the child, slightly amused and very condescending.
'Six! There now. Add up and count as far as six, can you? Well, that's a clever little girl, a clever little girl. And if she has to drink a spoonful of medicine, she won't make a murmur, I'll be bound. Not like some little girls. What? Eh?'
'I take it if mother wishes me to,' said Joyce.
'Ah, there now! That's the style! That's what I like to hear from a little lady in bed because she's cut her knee. That's the style—'
The comfortable and prolix doctor dressed and bandaged the knee and recommended bed and a light diet for the little lady. He thought a week or a fortnight would put it right. No bones or ligatures damaged—fortunately. Only a flesh cut. He would come again in a day or two.
So Joyce was reassured and stayed in bed and had all her toys up. Her father often played with her. The doctor came the third day. He was fairly pleased with the knee. It was healing. It was healing—yes—yes. Let the child continue in bed. He came again after a day or two. Winifred was a trifle uneasy. The wound seemed to be healing on the top, but it hurt the child too much. It didn't look quite right. She said so to Egbert.
'Egbert, I'm sure Joyce's knee isn't healing properly.'
'I think it is,' he said. 'I think it's all right.'
'I'd rather Doctor Wing came again—I don't feel satisfied.'
'Aren't you trying to imagine it worse than it really is?'
'You would say so, of course. But I shall write a post-card to Doctor Wing now.'
The doctor came next day. He examined the knee. Yes, there was inflammation. Yes, there might be a little septic poisoning—there might. There might. Was the child feverish?
So a fortnight passed by, and the child was feverish, and the knee was more inflamed and grew worse and was painful, painful. She cried in the night, and her mother had to sit up with her. Egbert still insisted it was nothing, really—it would pass. But in his heart he was anxious.
Winifred wrote again to her father. On Saturday the elderly man appeared. And no sooner did Winifred see the thick, rather short figure in its grey suit than a great yearning came over her.
'Father, I'm not satisfied with Joyce. I'm not satisfied with Doctor Wing.'
'Well, Winnie, dear, if you're not satisfied we must have further advice, that is all.'
The sturdy, powerful, elderly man went upstairs, his voice sounding rather grating through the house, as if it cut upon the tense atmosphere.
'How are you, Joyce, darling?' he said to the child. 'Does your knee hurt you? Does it hurt you, dear?'
'It does sometimes.' The child was shy of him, cold towards him.
'Well,