"It would be a bit of a kindness, I think," said the old Doctor, "your calling, I mean. There's too little public spirit amongst women, don't you think?"
"Oh, wouldn't it be a little impertinent perhaps to call, in that spirit?" asked Mrs. Leighton.
"Well, I don't know. The child is running wild. The parents are a pair of babies where healthy education is concerned. Result, the child has no friends, and expends her affection, she has stores of it, on her animals. A dog gets run over and dies. What do you get then? She never squeaks. Not a moan, you observe. But she sits up in that tree of hers with a cat to do any comforting she may want--and her hair begins to come out in patches."
Mrs. Leighton's knitting fell to her lap.
"Her hair is coming out in patches?" she asked in a horrified voice.
"Yes. What else would you have when a child is allowed to mope. Something is bound to happen. Clergymen are of use when a child's naughty. But when it mopes itself ill, we are called in. Yet it's a clergyman's task after all. This child, on the way to being a woman, has never had one friend. Her mother is too timid to be really friendly with any one, and the husband is wrapped in his dry-as-dust philosophy--and where are you with a tender child like that?"
"But if Mrs. Clutterbuck can't be friendly with any one, why should I call?" asked Mrs. Leighton hopelessly.
"Your girls might become friendly with the child," said he. "I'm afraid I don't make a very good clergyman."
"They call her the Serpent, you know," said Mrs. Leighton, "very naughty of them. I shall do my best, Doctor. I didn't know her hair was coming out in patches."
Dr. Merryweather might be complimented on his new profession after all. It had been a master stroke to refer to the patches. Mrs. Leighton had known of its happening after illness or great worry. That a child should suffer in this quiet moping manner seemed pathetic.