“Good-day, young man!” snapped Billson. “I guess you ain’t interested in what I know,” and he turned on his heel and limped away up the ward.
But Chet went out, feeling very much puzzled, and proceeded to take Mother Wit into his confidence. If Hester was innocent of even the smallest part in that affair, the whole school—and people outside the school, too—were treating Hester very unfairly.
For by this time Hester Grimes scarcely had a speaking acquaintance with the other girls of Central High, and she was welcome only at Lily Pendleton’s home.
[CHAPTER XXI—WHAT HESTER DID]
Dr. Agnew was very much troubled over his little patient down in the tenements, and he told Nellie about it one evening after supper.
“I have had to insist that the child be taken to the hospital,” said the good doctor. “That almost broke his mother’s heart; but their rooms were not sufficiently airy. And then, the child is suffering from pernicious anæmia, and unless he mends he will die, anyway.”
“That is an awful hard name to call little Johnny, Daddy Doctor,” said Nellie.
“It is awfully hard for little Johnny, that’s a fact,” said the doctor, thoughtfully. “It is awfully hard for his mother, who, like the plucky widow she is, has struggled so hard to bring those children to where they are. Bill, of course, has helped her; but Bill isn’t much smarter in some ways than silly Rufe. The widow’s done it all; and she’s just wrapped up in Johnny.”
“How cruel for anything to happen to him!” sighed Nellie.
“It looks so. We can’t see things in their true light very often, I suppose. It takes a Divine Eye to see straight,” and the doctor wagged his head. “Here’s this poor woman would give her heart’s blood—that’s the expression she uses—to save the little fellow. But her blood won’t do. She is not in a healthy condition herself. And Johnny needs perfectly healthy, normal blood——”