"Prin! Prin!" he cried aloud the next moment, and darted after the carriage, heedless of danger to himself.
Prin heard the cry and looked back. She recognized the ragged, dusty, deplorable little form pursuing the carriage. For a moment her eyes met those of her brother, and he knew that she saw him. But suddenly her face grew very red. She turned round quickly and looked in the opposite direction.
Instantly Bert understood. The Princess did not wish to see him. She was ashamed to call him her brother. The thought smote him with a pang of sharpest pain. He fell back at once, heedless of the perils of the busy road. A mounted policeman, suspecting the boy of begging to the annoyance of those within the carriage, was following at his heels.
Bert's sudden halt took him by surprise. He tried to pull up his horse, but there was not time. The animal reared wildly, but struck Bert as it reared. The boy fell senseless on the road.
Again the ambulance stretcher was in requisition. Bert was placed in it, and carried at once to St. George's Hospital, for it was feared that his hurt was serious.
[CHAPTER VIII]
In the Hospital
BERT was not likely to die. His worst injury was a broken rib, and that having been skilfully set, he was likely to do well. He did not suffer acute pain; yet the boy was miserable enough as he lay on his little bed in the hospital ward. He was enduring pangs which he could not describe, and which the best of nurses could not have relieved.
Shakespeare pronounced it "sharper than a serpent's tooth" to have a thankless child, and the sting of the ingratitude that sins against love is under all circumstances hard to bear. Bert could not have put his feelings into words, but his heart ached at the remembrance of how Prin had turned from him. It seemed cruel of her, for she must have known how he had suffered from loneliness and heartache since she went away.