Part 84 (1/2)

”His back!” she repeated in a frightened tone.

Everybody was afraid of that mysterious back. And George himself was most afraid of it.

”I'll get over the wall,” said Janet.

Edwin quitted the wall. Maggie was coming out of the house with a large cane easy-chair and a large cus.h.i.+on. But George was now standing up, though still crying. His beautiful best sailor hat lay on the winter ground.

”Now,” said Maggie to him, ”you mustn't be a baby!”

He glared at her resentfully. She would have dropped down dead on the spot if his wet and angry glance could have killed her. She was a powerful woman. She seized him carefully and set him in the chair, and supported the famous spine with the cus.h.i.+on.

”I don't think he's much hurt,” she decided. ”He couldn't make that noise if he was, and see how his colour's coming back!”

In another case Edwin would have agreed with her, for the tendency of both was to minimise an ill and to exaggerate the philosophical att.i.tude in the first moments of any occurrence that looked serious. But now he honestly thought that her judgement was being influenced by her prejudice, and he felt savage against her. The worst was that it was all his fault. Maggie was odiously right. He ought never to have encouraged the child to be acrobatic on the wall. It was he who had even put the idea of the wall as a means of access into the child's head.

”Does it hurt?” he inquired, bending down, his hands on his knees.

”Yes,” said George, ceasing to cry.

”Much?” asked Maggie, dusting the sailor hat and sticking it on his head.

”No, not much,” George unwillingly admitted. Maggie could not at any rate say that he did not speak the truth.

Janet, having obtained steps, stood on the wall in her elaborate street-array.

”Who's going to help me down?” she demanded anxiously. She was not so young and sprightly as once she had been. Edwin obeyed the call.

Then the three of them stood round the victim's chair, and the victim, like a G.o.d, permitted himself to be contemplated. And Janet had to hear Edwin's account of the accident, and also Maggie's account of it, as seen from the window.

”I don't know what to do!” said Janet.

”It is annoying, isn't it?” said Maggie. ”And just as you were going to the station too!”

”I--I think I'm all right,” George announced.

Janet pa.s.sed a hand down his back, as though expecting to be able to judge the condition of his spine through the thickness of all his clothes.

”Are you?” she questioned doubtfully.

”It's nothing,” said Maggie, with firmness.

”He'd be all right in the train,” said Janet. ”It's the walking to the station that I'm afraid of... You never know.”

”I can carry him,” said Edwin quickly.

”Of course you can't!” Maggie contradicted. ”And even if you could you'd jog him far worse than if he walked himself.”

”There's no time to get a cab, now,” said Janet, looking at her watch.

”If we aren't at Knype, father will wonder what on earth's happened, and I don't know what his mother would say!”

”Where's that old pram?” Edwin demanded suddenly of Maggie.