"I am afraid I must refuse, sir," she said. "We are not in a position to pay him."
"Leave that to me," I replied. "When one dear to you is in peril you cannot refuse to accept assistance even from a stranger. I can sympathize with honest pride, but surely this would be carrying it too far. Your mother needs a doctor. She shall see one." I looked up at the windows, and in one at the top of the house I could faintly distinguish a glimmer of light. "Is that your room?"
"Yes, sir."
"Shall I knock or ring when I come back with the doctor?"
"If you will give a gentle knock, so as not to disturb the other lodgers, I will come down." Then, after a momentary pause, "I did not believe there was such goodness in the world."
"You overrate my services. If you knew what you have saved me from——" I did not finish, but asked her to give me the name of the street and the number of the house, which she did. "And your name?"
"Cameron, sir."
"Thank you. The trust you repose in me shall not be abused."
I waited till she had let herself in with a latch-key, and then I departed on my errand.
By this time the fog was so thick that I doubt whether I should have found the street to which I had been directed had it not been for the assistance of a policeman, who accompanied me to the doctor's house. The doctor himself answered my summons, an elderly gentleman, with a careworn, benignant face, who, when he learned what was required of him, said he would come with me at once. We conversed on the way, and he informed me that he had some knowledge of the Camerons, who had called him two or three months ago to prescribe for the mother. They were respectable people, he told me, who had, like numbers of others in the locality, a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. They belonged to the class who slaved and suffered patiently and silently; everybody spoke well of them, and the daughter was specially modest and gentle in her manners. Except that they appeared to be superior in point of conduct and education, to their neighbors, he knew nothing more of them. He was surprised, the mother being so ill, that the daughter had not come to him; but yet, on second thoughts, he was not surprised, their peculiar delicacy in money matters stopping the way. It was often so with the poor, who were hyper-sensitive in their pride.