"Beswick is a very good young fellow, with ample hospital experience," said Gunstone. "Can you send for him at once?"
Robert, who stood alert without the door, was told to bring Dr. Beswick in the carriage, and in a very short space of time Beswick was there, having left Mrs. Beswick sure that success and renown could not be far away when her husband was called on Gunstone's recommendation, and fetched in a coupé under the conduct of what seemed to her a coachman and a footman. Beswick's awkwardness and his abrupt up-and-downness of manner contrasted strangely with Dr. Gunstone's simple but graceful ways. A few rapid directions served to put the case into Beswick's hands, and the old doctor bowed swiftly to all in the room, descended the stairs, and, having picked his way hurriedly through a swarm of children on the sidewalk, entered the carriage again, and was gone.
Millard looked at his watch, remembered that he had had no breakfast, and prepared to take his leave.
"Thank you, Charley, ever so much," said his aunt. "I don't know what I should have done without you."
"Miss Callender is the one to thank," said Millard, scarcely daring to look at her, as he bade her and Dr. Beswick good-morning.
When he had reached the bottom of the long flight of stairs, Millard suddenly turned about and climbed upward once more.
"Miss Callender," he said, standing in the door, "let me speak to you, please."
Phillida went out to him. This confidential conversation could not but excite a rush of associations and emotion in the minds of both of them, so that neither dared to look directly at the other as they stood there in the obscure light which struggled through two dusty panes of glass at the top of the next flight.
"You must not stay here," he said. "You're very weary; you will be liable to take the disease. I am going to send a professional nurse."
This solicitude for her was so like the Charley of other times that it made Phillida tremble with a grateful emotion she could not quite conceal.