Young Stephen was very ill. Peter was strangely assured that it was to be a bad business. Well, it rested with him, Peter, to pull the boy through. If he chose to put his back into it and give the kid some of his own vigour and strength then it was bound to be all right.
Standing there in the dark, he stripped his mind naked; he flung from it every other thought, every other interest—his work, Clare, everything must go. Only Stephen mattered and Stephen should be pulled through.
For an instant, a little cold trembling fear struck his heart. Supposing...? Then fiercely, flinging the thought from him he trampled it down.
He went to the telephone and called up a doctor who lived in Cheyne Walk. The man could be with him in a quarter of an hour.
Then he went back into the nursery. Mrs. Kant was there.
“I've sent for Dr. Mitchell.”
“Very well, sir.”
“He'll be here in quarter of an hour.”
“Very well, sir.”
He hated the woman. He would like to take her thin, bony neck and wring it.