Then he turned, looked squarely into Rosamund's face, and issued his orders in precisely the manner of a doctor to a nurse, without a trace of hesitation, apparently without a shadow of doubt that she would obey.
"Keep ice on his head, you know, and watch him every minute through the night. He's not likely to move; but if he should become conscious——" He continued his directions carefully, explicitly, all the while looking at Rosamund intently, as if to impress them upon her.
While he was speaking, Flood's face flushed darkly. With the doctor's last phrase, "Only be sure to watch him every minute," he spoke sharply. "You are making a mistake, Doctor Ogilvie," he said. "Miss Randall is not a nurse."
The doctor instantly replied, "I know she isn't, but we'll have to do the best we can with her!"
Flood's face grew redder still; Rosamund smiled a little. "Miss Randall cannot possibly stay here," Flood said. "That is entirely out of the question. I am willing to do all I can for the child, and I am very glad he is not seriously hurt, although the accident was, I think, unavoidable. I will send a nurse to-morrow—two, if you want them. But you will have to get along with the help here for to-night."
"Haven't any," said the doctor, briefly. "Yetta's a child, and Mother Cary goes down to her daughter's where there's a new baby."
For a moment no one spoke. Mother Cary was smiling at Rosamund, and her look drew the girl's from the two men. Then her smile answered the old woman's.
In a flash of inspiration she knew that she had found an answer to her questions of the earlier hours; something in her heart drew her symbolically toward the little silent, helpless child in the darkened room behind her, some mother-feeling as new and wonderful as the dawn of life. Both Flood and the doctor remembered, through all their lives, the look of exaltation on her face when she spoke.
"I will stay," she said, quietly, and walked into the darkened room.