"His mother! Oh, my God!" said John Lester desperately. He turned from them and went across the paddock with his head down.
"No—don't go after him. He's got to work it out alone, poor chap!" said the surgeon, pityingly.
"You haven't told the mother yet?"
"No. He wants to tell her himself. But she won't feel it as much."
"She! Why, she adores the boy!"
"Yes, but women are different, which is something to be thankful for," said the doctor. "She has the boy still, and the relief of his being alive is so intense that the other part will be secondary. He'll be her baby again; she'll be able to attend him ceaselessly; to spend her whole life on him. That's always going to help a mother. Lester won't have as much comfort that way, and he has all a father's broken pride and thwarted ambitions. It's a hard sentence for a man with an only son."
From the shadow of a great clump of desert pea a little figure crept—Merle, her lank black hair hanging about her tear-stained face. She caught at her father's coat with shaking fingers.
"Daddy! It isn't true—Dick won't be a cripple! Say it, daddy!"
Robert Warner looked down at her gloomily.
"I wish to God I could," he said. "And I wish I'd never asked them on this unlucky visit." His face hardened as he looked at his daughter. "You'd better go inside, Merle—and remember you're not to talk about it."