The surgeon’s examination showed that one of the child’s legs was broken but this did not trouble him half so much as her continued unconsciousness. But he worked diligently to restore her and to prepare the injured limb for removal to her own home.
From a low seat in the corner and hugging the baby tight, to keep him quiet, Mary Jane watched the little sufferer upon her mother’s bed, with wide, dry eyes and heaving breast.
“Oh! if I could only take it for her!” she thought, helplessly. “It wouldn’t have mattered to anybody like me, ’cause I’m all crooked anyhow; but her! She was that straight and beautiful—my sake! It mustn’t be—it mustn’t! And she didn’t mind. She let me wear her hat, me. Well, that didn’t get hurt, any way. It just tumbled off all safe. I had to wear it home, else I couldn’t have dragged the baby, and I don’t know not a thing whatever became of his wagon. Never mind that, though. If she only would open her eyes, just once, just once!”
But they had not opened even when, a half-hour later, another carriage paused before the Bumps’ tenement, and a tall, pale lady descended, trembling so that she had almost to be carried by the Gray Gentleman who supported her.
This was Mrs. McClure and she had just been stepping into her own vehicle for a morning’s shopping when he reached her door, bringing his unhappy message. So there was no time lost in securing a vehicle and the mother was soon at her child’s bedside. At any other hour she might have shrunk from entering so poor a place but at that moment she had, for once, forgotten her own high station and thought only of her darling.
One glimpse of the lovely face, so still and unresponsive, banished the mother’s last vestige of strength and she would have fallen where she stood, had not Mrs. Bump slipped an arm about her and motioned Mrs. Stebbins to bring the one sound chair the room could boast. The doctor held a glass of water to her lips and the faintness passed.
“Is—she—alive?”
“Yes. She is still alive,” answered the physician, gravely, and Mrs. McClure turned faint again.
“Of course, she’s alive, lady; and what’s more it won’t be long, I reckon, before she’ll be asking a lot of questions all about what’s happened her. Oh! yes indeed. I’ve seen ’em a sight worst than she is, and up and around again as lively as crickets. Why, there’s my Mary Jane—”
But the cripple held up a warning finger and Mrs. Bump ceased speaking. Though not her helpful ministrations; for with a whisk to the stove she had seized a coarse brown teapot and poured from it a hot draught into a cup that had no handle, indeed, yet could serve as well as another to refresh an exhausted creature.