The big car drew up to the gate very gently; Yetta called, loudly and shrilly; Flood lifted the boy and carried him towards the house, and Rosamund followed; but halfway up the path she paused, half in amazement, half in repulsion.
Yetta's call had brought to the doorway the strangest of small creatures—a tiny, bent old woman. She braced herself on one side against the doorway, on the other with a queer little crutch with padded top, held by a strap across her shoulder; as she came forward to meet them she moved the crutch, like some strange crab, obliquely, grotesquely, yet with the adeptness of the life-long cripple. She was evidently startled, even frightened; but when her eyes met Rosamund's she smiled. At once the girl's feeling of repulsion vanished, for on the tiny old face there was none of the suffering and regret that so often mark the deformed. It was not drawn or heavy; plain and homely though it was, it was made radiant by a world-embracing mother-love, transfigured by that quality of tenderness and sweetness that Rosamund had learned to associate with pictured mediæval saints and martyrs. With Mother Cary's first smile, something entered the girl's consciousness which never again left it.
The old woman paid no attention to Yetta's voluble explanations, nor wasted any time on questions.
"Take him into the room on the left and lay him on the sofy," she directed, and hobbled along behind the little procession; but when they had lain the still unconscious child in the shaded best room, she looked from Flood to Rosamund for explanation, with a dignity which could not fail to impress them.
"Maybe he's just been knocked senseless," she said, when they had told her all they could. "But anyways, we ought to have Doctor Ogilvie here's soon as ever we can. If the young lady'll help me undress the little feller, you can take Yetta, sir, to show you the way."
Flood hesitated; to undress the child would be a strange task for Rosamund. "Can't I do that before we go?" he asked.
But the old woman had no such hesitation. "No, you can't," she said, "an' I wish you'd hurry. Timmy ain't strong, anyway."
So, with a troubled look, Flood followed Yetta, and in a moment Rosamund heard the purr of the motor as the car sped off towards the Summit; then, as she afterwards remembered with surprise and wonder, she found herself obeying the old woman's directions.
"Now, honey, you jest lift the little feller right up in your arms, bein' careful of his head; he don't weigh no more'n a picked chicken. We'll get him to bed time the doctor gets here, an' have some water b'ilin' an' some ice brought in, case he wants either one. Here, right in here—my house is mostly all on one floor, so's I can manage to scramble around in it when Pap's in the fields. That's the way—no, he won't need a piller. I'll take off his little clo'es whilst you lift him—that's right. My! Think o' that gentleman wantin' to do for him—as if any woman with a heart in her body could let a man handle sech a little thing's this! But he didn't know, did he, honey?"
And strangely enough Rosamund was conscious of a wave of tenderness towards the pathetic little figure, limp and emaciated; long afterwards she realized that people always did and felt what Mother Cary expected them to. She even bathed the little dusty feet, while the old woman hobbled about to bring her different things, talking all the while.