“Will you come into the hotel and rest?” he asked, noting in some anxiety that her two small feet were braced against the pavement to keep her from falling.
She drew herself up suspiciously: “No, thank you.”
“There is a ladies’ entrance,” he said, pulling severely at his moustache.
“I am going to see my brother,” she said loftily, and leaving him without a word she, by a severe effort, managed to walk as far as the door having on it the brass plate, “Dr. Camperdown, Surgeon.” Arrived there, she tottered inside and seated herself on the lowest step of the staircase, while Captain Macartney, passing by the open doorway, knew that she would be safe now, and went on his way muttering thoughtfully, “Poor child!”
After she had rested sufficiently Zilla, with lips firmly compressed, climbed the steps to the waiting room and seated herself among her adopted brother’s patients.
The next time Camperdown opened the door he saw her and called her into the inner room. “Now, birdling, what is it? Be quick, for I am rushed this morning. What’s the matter with your cheeks? Have you seen a ghost?”
“I have done a bad thing,” said the little girl deliberately.
“Indeed! An unusual confession for you. I thought that you and the pope had the infallibility of the world between you. Out with it.”
“I have told my father to leave Halifax.”
“H’m—well, yes, that was bad—for you. What was the occasion of it?” and by means of questions he drew from her an account of her meeting with Frispi after she had run away from Mrs. Trotley, who had gone shopping with her.[her.]