Not so Dorothy, who had entered with the rest and who noticed Dr. Winston’s impatience—who knew that a hospital was where his patient should be and not this ill-equipped cottage. Throwing off her dripping jacket, she cried:
“I’ll help.”
A teakettle was singing beside the soup-pot on the stove and a dishpan was hanging near. To empty the kettle into the pan and to carry it to the chair beside the bed was an instant’s task. Then, seizing the upper sheet and using her teeth for scissors, she swiftly tore it into strips; and by this time the dame had regained her own presence of mind.
Without troubling to ask who Dorothy was or how she came to be there, she now took charge of things, saying:
“You’ll find clean towels in that chest of drawers. Fetch the doctor a pile. Shears are yon in that work-basket. You’re spry on your feet as I can’t be, but I do know how to take the clothes off this poor Robin. My, what’s this he clenches so tight in hand? One of them telegraph letters ’tis his errand to deliver. All over the countryside the laddie rode on his wheel to earn the bit money would pay his mother’s rent. Brave, bonny lad that he was!”
Gently releasing the telegram from his fingers, Mrs. Gilpin held it up for the doctor to see.
“For Oak Knowe. Open it, little girl, and read if it’s important.”
She obeyed, but her voice trembled as she read. It was the belated message that announced her own coming and the hour of her arrival. It explained why she had not been met at the station, but she felt both shocked and guilty as she exclaimed:
“Oh! it is my fault! It’s all my fault that he is killed! Just about me it happened! What shall I do—what shall I do?”