As he raced along, with a heart beating in terror at what he had left behind on the hall-floor, there flitted through the boy's brain the old wondering curiosity as to what made the doctor-brothers such bitter enemies.
In the dining-room of the White House a group of children were staring idly out of the window, watching the village ducks, the only creatures really enjoying the deluge of rain on that wet Saturday.
The table was spread for early dinner, and the appetising sniffs stealing up from the kitchen reminded the other Carews that they were hungry.
"Oh, do look!" Gwen nudged Tony excitedly. "There's a boy with nothing on his head tearing along in the rain! He will fall over those wobbling ducks if he doesn't look out!"
"I do believe he is making for our house!" slowly said Tony, as he stared out eagerly.
"There's somebody taken suddenly ill, that's it! He's coming for Pater!" observed Traffy, a bright little urchin who had just stepped out of petticoats into a sailor suit and Latin.
"Oh, oh! it's one of the Carew boys from Tile House, and he is coming in here!" Trissy, the youngest, whispered, in an awestruck voice, and she shrank back from the window. The four Carews of the White House had brooded to the full as much as the young folk of the Tile House over the estrangement between their Fathers, though they had never dared to ask their parents any questions about the matter.
All the children knew this much, that old Grandpapa had been Doctor Mark Carew of Allonby Edge, and when he died his two sons succeeded to his practice as partners. In time the young doctors married, and the elder children remembered dimly that the Tile House and the White House had been like one home with two roofs.
Then came the mysterious quarrel that froze up that "good and joyful thing, dwelling together in unity." It was all so sad and heart-breaking that nobody ever ventured to question the two brothers thus living apart in enmity. The more you love anyone, the more terrible a thing it is to quarrel with that person.