“Not the household stuff,” Reggie repeated, and he went back to the child. . . .
It was many hours afterwards that he came softly downstairs. In the hall husband and wife met him. It seemed to him that it was the man who had been crying. “Are you going away?” Mrs. Warnham said.
“There’s no more pain. He is asleep.”
Her eyes darkened. “You mean he’s—dead?” the man gasped.
“I hope he’ll live longer than any of us, Captain Warnham. But no one must disturb him. The nurse will be watching, you know. And I’m sure we all want to sleep sound—don’t we?” He was gone. But he stayed a moment on the doorstep. He heard emotions within.
On the next afternoon Dr. Eden came into his laboratory at St. Saviour’s. “One moment. One moment.” Reggie was bent over a notebook. “When I go to hell they’ll set me doing sums.” He frowned at his figures. “The third time is lucky. That’s plausible if it isn’t right. Well, how’s our large patient?”
“He’s doing well. Quite easy and cheerful.”
Reggie stood up. “I think we might say, thank God.”
“Yes, rather. I thought he was gone last night, Fortune. He would have been without you. It was wonderful how he bucked up in your hands. You ought to have been a children’s specialist.”
“My dear chap! Oh, my dear chap! I’m the kind of fellow who would always ought to have been something else. And so I’m doing sums in a laboratory which God knows I’m not fit for.”