CHAPTER II
They were surrounded immediately by a crowd in which policemen were a prominent feature. The chauffeur seemed dazed in the hands of the officers.
A little, barefoot, white-faced figure huddled limply in the midst showed Gordon what had happened: also there were menacing glances towards himself and a show of lifted stones. He heard one boy say: “You bet he’s in a hurry to git away. Them kind allus is. They don’t care who they kills, they don’t!”
A great horror seized him. The cab had run over a newsboy and perhaps killed him. Yet instantly came the remembrance of his commission: “Don’t let anything hinder you. Make it a matter of life and death!” Well, it looked as if this was a matter of death that hindered him now.
They bundled the moaning boy into the taxicab and as Gordon saw no escape through the tightly packed crowd, who eyed him suspiciously, he climbed in beside the grimy little scrap of unconscious humanity, and they were off to the hospital to the tune of “Don’t let anything hinder you! Don’t let anything hinder you!” until Gordon felt that if it did not stop soon he would go crazy. He meditated opening the cab door and making his escape in spite of the speed they were making, but a vision of broken legs and a bed in the hospital for himself held him to his seat. One of the policemen had climbed on in front with the chauffeur, and now and again he glanced back as if he were conveying a couple of prisoners to jail. It was vexatious beyond anything! And all on account of that white dog! Could anything be more ridiculous than the whole performance?
His annoyance and irritation almost made him forget that it was his progress through the streets that had silenced this mite beside him. But just as he looked at his watch for the fifth time the boy opened his eyes and moaned, and there was in those eyes a striking resemblance to the look in the eyes of the dog of whose presence he had but just rid himself.
Gordon started. In spite of himself it seemed as if the dog were reproaching him through the eyes of the child. Then suddenly the boy spoke.
“Will yous stay by me till I’m mended?” whispered the weak little voice.
Gordon’s heart leaped in horror again, and it came to him that he was being tried out this day to see if he had the right stuff in him for hard tasks. The appeal in the little street-boy’s eyes reached him as no request had ever yet done, and yet he might not answer it. Duty,—life and death duty,—called him elsewhere, and he must leave the little fellow whom he had been the involuntary cause of injuring, to suffer and perhaps to die. It cut him to the quick not to respond to that urgent appeal.
Was it because he was weary that he was visited just then by a vision of Julia Bentley with her handsome lips curled scornfully? Julia Bentley would not have approved of his stopping to carry a boy to the hospital, any more than to care for a dog’s comfort.