Edwin quitted the wall. Maggie was coming out of the house with a large cane easy-chair and a large cushion. 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 cushion.
“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 attitude 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.