“You’d better go for the doctor, Egbert,” said Winifred bitterly.
“Oh, no! Oh, no!” cried Joyce in a panic.
“Joyce, my darling, don’t cry!” said Winifred, suddenly catching the little girl to her breast in a strange tragic anguish, the Mater Dolorata. Even the child was frightened into silence. Egbert looked at the tragic figure of his wife with the child at her breast, and turned away. Only Annabel started suddenly to cry: “Joycey, Joycey, don’t have your leg bleeding!”
Egbert rode four miles to the village for the doctor. He could not help feeling that Winifred was laying it on rather. Surely the knee itself wasn’t hurt! Surely not. It was only a surface cut.
The doctor was out. Egbert left the message and came cycling swiftly home, his heart pinched with anxiety. He dropped sweating off his bicycle and went into the house, looking rather small, like a man who is at fault. Winifred was upstairs sitting by Joyce, who was looking pale and important in bed, and was eating some tapioca pudding. The pale, small, scared face of his child went to Egbert’s heart.
“Doctor Wing was out. He’ll be here about half past two,” said Egbert.
“I don’t want him to come,” whimpered Joyce.
“Joyce, dear, you must be patient and quiet,” said Winifred. “He won’t hurt you. But he will tell us what to do to make your knee better quickly. That is why he must come.”
Winifred always explained carefully to her little girls: and it always took the words off their lips for the moment.
“Does it bleed yet?” said Egbert.