"I know it was wrong." Timmy twisted himself about. "But it's no good you saying that to me now—it only makes me more miserable."
"But I have to say so, my boy." Janet was not a Scotch mother for nothing. "I have to say so, Timmy, and I shall not be sorry this happened, if it makes you behave in a different way—as I hope it will—the whole of your life long."
"It won't—I won't let it—if anything is done to Josephine!"
But she went on, a little desperately, yet speaking in a quiet, collected way: "I believe the things you say, Timmy. I believe you do see things which other people are not allowed to see. But that ought to make you far, far more careful—not less careful. Try to be an instrument for good, not for evil, my dear, dear child."
Timmy did not answer at once, but at last he said in a queer, muffled voice: "If I were to tell Dr. O'Farrell what I did, do you think it would make any difference? Do you think that he'd let Josephine go on being alive?"
"No," his mother answered, sadly, "I don't think it would make any difference."
"I thought by what the doctor said at first that they were going to take Josephine somewhere to see if she was really mad," said Timmy in a choking voice, "just as they did to Captain Berner's dog last year."
Janet Tosswill got up from her little boy's bed. She lit a candle. Poor Timmy! She had never seen the boy looking as he was looking now; he seemed utterly spent with misery.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, my dear. I'll speak to Dr. O'Farrell myself in the morning, and I'll ask him whether something can't be done in the way of a reprieve. I'll tell him we don't mind paying for Josephine to be sent away for a bit to a vet."
Hope, ecstatic hope, flashed into Timmy's tear-stained face. "You mean to a man like Trotman?"