As they turned in at the Willowbrook gate Peter strained forward to catch sight of the house. A strange coupé was drawn up before the porte-cochère. He involuntarily pulled Arab to a standstill and looked away, but the nurse reached out and grasped the reins.
"Here, man, what is the matter with you? Hurry up! They may want me to help get the boy in."
Peter drove on and sat staring woodenly while she sprang to the ground and hurried forward. Mrs. Carter and the maids were gathered in a frightened group on the steps. He could hear Miss Ethel inside the carriage calling wildly:
"Do be quick! His head has commenced to bleed again."
The driver climbed down to help the doctor lift him out. They jarred him going up the steps and he moaned slightly. Peter cursed the man's clumsy feet, though not for worlds could he himself have stirred to help them. The boy's head was bandaged with a towel, and he looked very limp and white, but he summoned a feeble smile at sight of his mother. They carried him in and the servants crowded after in an anxious effort to help.
Peter drove on to the stables and put up Arab. In a few minutes Billy returned leading the two horses. He was frightened and excited; and he burst into an account of the accident while he was still half way down the drive.
"It wasn't my fault," he called. "Miss Ethel said it wasn't my fault. We met a mowing-machine and Apache bolted. He threw the boy off against a stone wall, and by the time I reached 'em, Apache was eating grass in the next field and Master Bobby lying in the ditch with 'is head cut open."
"I don't want to hear about it," Peter returned shortly. "Put them horses up and get out."
He himself removed Apache's new saddle and bridle and drove him with a vicious whack into the stall. Billy took himself off to find a more appreciative audience, while Peter dropped down on a stool inside the stable door, and with his chin in his hands sat watching the house. He saw the nurse fling wide the blinds of Bobby's room and roll up the shades; he wondered with a choking sensation what they were doing to the boy that they needed so much light. He saw Annie come out and hang some towels on the line. The whole aspect of the place to Peter's sharpened senses wore an air of tragic bustle. No one came near to tell him how the boy was doing; he had not the courage to go to the house and ask. He sat dumbly waiting for something to happen while twilight faded into dusk. One of the stableboys came to call him to supper and he replied crossly that he didn't want any supper. Presently he heard a step scrunching on the gravel, and he looked up to find Annie coming toward him.