Hugh was already hurrying out into the village by the old doctor’s side. “Little Pauly ill!—that jolly little chap!” he kept on saying, and he walked so fast that the old man could hardly keep pace with him.
There was a strange silence in the village. Hardly any children were playing in the road. “We had to shut the schools,” said Dr. Lorry.
The village seemed almost as though it held its breath and waited for some stroke to fall.
Hugh looked up at the tall, grey tower of Lislehurst Church as they passed beneath it, and thought of little Pauly as he had been on that bright December morning, full of life and mischief. It seemed incredible to imagine illness or death coming near him.
Dr. Lorry followed the direction of his eyes.
“The Vicar told me of that morning on the tower,” he said. “You saved the boy once, Chichester; please God, you’ll save him again.”
The Vicarage nursery was a good deal changed from the cheerful room where Sydney had sat on her first morning in Blankshire. The toys, no longer wanted, were pushed aside and put away in cupboards; their absence giving a curiously forlorn appearance to the room.
Sickroom appliances had taken their place, and the little iron cot, from which Pauly’s restless fingers used to scrape the paint on summer mornings when getting-up time seemed long in coming, was pulled into the centre of the room.
Pauly’s thick red curls had been cropped close to his head for coolness, and the sturdy, roundabout figure was shrunk to a mere shadow of its former self. It was hard to believe him the same child who had displayed the glory of his first knickerbockers with such pride at the Castle only a short week ago!
Beside the little cot the Vicar stood, very quiet, as he had been all through the illness, but with eyes that asked more questions than his lips.