"Got in earlier than I expected. Come on back and enjoy the twilight with me," she heard him inviting.
Lois' answer was inaudible but in a moment Doctor Tom entered the living-room alone.
"Hello, here's my best daughter and my star neighbor! Come on, Cherub, and let your old Dad toss you up to the moon."
Marjory leaped with a happy little crow out of Sylvia's arms and Sylvia rose to the higher level of a chair while she smiled at the baby's gurgling delight as her father tossed her "up to the moon." Presently the doctor seated himself before the fire with his small daughter still in his arms. As he settled back with a tired sigh Sylvia saw with sudden quick compunction that Doctor Tom looked old--too old for his years. Some of his characteristic buoyancy had gone out of him.
"How is the Curry baby?" she asked.
He shook his head sadly.
"Died early this morning," he said.
"Oh!" Sylvia's exclamation was pitiful. "Can I do anything?"
"Go down and see the mother. She is like a stone. Can't even cry. Maybe the baby's better off. The father is drunk half the time and there isn't any too much to eat. But if I could have had Jimmy in a decent hospital I could have saved him. Everything was against him down there, poor little chap!" And Tom Daly's big hand closed over little Marjory's dimpled one as if somehow to keep her safe from the grim enemy that had pursued Jimmy Curry, an enemy who had altogether too many allies down in the unsanitary tenement district where the baby had wearily breathed his little life in and out again in one short year. Then the doctor's fist came down with a resounding thump on the arm of the chair. "I tell you, Sylvia, we have got to get that hospital and get it quick. We're wasting human life too fast at this rate."
"Will money help? You know I'm ready to give to the hospital any time--any amount you want."