“Oh, yes, I don’t mind them. I often nips in there when any one’s coming.”
“Did you hear anything else, Bob?” said Rich excitedly, as she held the boy’s hand.
“Not till some one else come, and knocked two or three times; and I was going to answer the door, when the doctor come and turned down the gas, and then I lay still, and heard him putting the physic bottles away afore he’d let ’em in; didn’t you, sir?”
The doctor smiled, and shook his head.
“Why, I heared you!” said the boy reproachfully; “and then you turns up the gas again, and I lifts the lid a bit, and sees it was two men and an accident.”
“An accident?”
“Yes, Miss, a chap as they said had been run over; and they brings him in, and puts him on the cushion a-top o’ the box I was in; and I lay still and listens, for I says as it was a good chance to hear a operation if I couldn’t see one.”
“Go on, boy; go on.”
“All right, sir. Well, as I listens—oh, it was good! The chap groans and hollers about his chest, and then he makes no end of fuss, and the doctor says he’ll soon be all right; and then—whoosh!—croosh! I hears as if some one had been hit, and a big fall—quelch! Then I lay very still, for I was scared. I heard some one get off the box, and a lot o’ whispering and I dursn’t move, for fear they should know I was there. But when I did peep, and lifted the lid softly, there was the doctor lying close to the box, on his face, and I thought he was dead.
“That give me a turn, Miss,” continued the boy, after moistening his lips, for his voice had become husky, “and I don’t think I knowed what happened till I heerd a skeary kind o’ noise, and a loud sort o’ whop in the ’sulting-room; and then the door was opened, and I see the light shining on you a-lying on the sofa—you, sir—sleep or shamming, and a man in there too, a-lying down, and—and—I—I can’t help it, Miss—I ain’t had much to eat lately, and I—”