"I don't see that it matters very much; I am not gone on that sort of thing myself," he replied briefly; and then he turned to Nealie, asking in a tone of grave concern, as Sylvia hurried away to bed: "Is it anything about Father, Nealie?"
"Yes," she said faintly. "That is to say, it is about the trouble that came before Ducky was born; you remember it?"
"I never knew more about it than that he made a mistake, some medical blunder, for which he would have to live more or less under a cloud for the remainder of his professional life. I thought it was all that any of us knew, and Aunt Judith hated to have it mentioned." Rupert's tone was fairly aggressive now, for he was quite abnormally sensitive on this subject of his father's disgrace, which had indirectly cost his mother her life and had plunged the family into poverty, and bereft them of their father also.
"Mrs. Puffin told me all about it one day soon after Aunt Judith was taken ill," said Nealie, her voice quivering now with emotion, for it was terrible to her to have to talk of this thing which had thrown such a shadow over their lives.
"How did she know?" demanded Rupert hotly, thinking how hateful it was that a servant should know more about their private skeleton than they knew themselves.
"Aunt Judith told her," replied Nealie; and then she burst out hotly: "But indeed there is nothing to look so shocked about in the affair, Rupert. If Father did make a mistake, it was not so serious as it might have been; and I think that it was altogether wrong to hush it up as it has been. There are some things which are all the better for being told, and I am quite sure that this is one of them."
"What do you mean?" he asked hoarsely. "I should think that a mistake of that kind should be buried as deep as possible, for who would be likely to trust a doctor who might make blunders that might cost a man his life?"
"It was not a life-or-death blunder in that sense, but only one of maiming," said Nealie hastily. "Father wanted to take off a man's arm to save his life; but the family, and I suppose the man himself, would not hear of it, for the man was heir to someone's property, an awful pile it was; and the someone—she was a woman—said that her money should never go to a man who was maimed. So of course the man's family would not hear of it, and they would not have another doctor called in either; and things went on, the poor man getting worse and worse, until one day Father declared that he would throw up the case, because he would not be responsible for the man's life. Then the man said that it could be taken off if Father liked, only it must be done without his people knowing anything about it, which was easy enough, seeing that he was being nursed at his lodgings. Father sent for another doctor to come and administer the chloroform, and he performed the operation himself, as the man was too bad to be moved eight miles to the nearest hospital. There was a frightful week after that, when Father simply gave up everything to pull the poor fellow through. He did it too, and the relatives did not know until he was out of danger that the arm had been amputated."
"Whew, what a story!" said Rupert, mopping his forehead, on which the perspiration stood in great beads. "I think that Father was a hero, because he acted up to his principle—the true doctor principle—of saving life at no matter what cost to himself. But I don't mind admitting, now that I know the truth, that I have always been afraid of hearing that story, because I had got the impression that there was something really disgraceful behind."
"Poor Father has had to suffer as bitterly as if he had made the most ghastly blunder imaginable," said Nealie sadly. "The man's people had a lot of influence, although they were not really wealthy, and when they found out that the arm had been taken off they simply hounded Father down as if he were a criminal. He was boycotted in every direction, and in the end he had to get out of his practice in a hurry. Then Ducky was born, and Mother died; and there would have been no home for us at all if Aunt Judith had not opened her house to take us in."