“My goodness, Daddy Doctor!” exclaimed Nellie, with a shiver. “How you do talk!”
“Eh?”
“As though anybody’s blood could help poor Johnny.”
“Ah! but that’s just it, Nellie. Somebody’s blood would help poor little Johnny. A pint or so of somebody’s healthy, red blood——”
“How horrid!” cried the girl, trying to jump off the chair; but her father’s big hand held her.
“Wait. Don’t be a ridiculous Miss Nancy!” he said, with a chuckle. “You are as much a surgeon’s daughter as a doctor’s daughter, I hope.”
“I’m proud that you heal folk of diseases, Daddy Doctor,” she said, laughing faintly. “But you talk now just like a butcher.”
“No. The transfusion of blood is one of the most wonderful and blessed discoveries of recent years. Perhaps not a discovery; but the proper way to do it is a recent discovery. And that is what we want to try on little Johnny at the hospital.”
“Oh, Daddy!” gasped Nellie, at last seeing that he was in earnest.
“Johnny’s condition is such that he needs good, red corpuscles pumping through his veins, and without a proper amount or a proper quality of blood, he cannot live. The nourishment he can take is insufficient to make this blood. What he must have is now in the possession of some other person. We must find that person very quickly—or not at all.”