She went obediently, not crying, but with her childish face set in a look of horror that was not good to see. The doctor looked after her.
"Poor child!" he said. "She came to me last night, and knelt down in front of me and begged me to make Dick well. Someone has told her it's all her fault."
"And so it is," Robert Warner said heavily.
"No good telling a baby that—and she's little more." The doctor lit a cigarette. "And it was only a bit of childish disobedience."
"Well, its consequences will darken my house as long as I live," Mr. Warner said.
Out in the paddocks Dick Lester's father tramped up and down, trying to realise the thing that had befallen them, and praying for courage to tell his wife. How could he tell her? How to find words to shatter the hopes and the joy that thirteen years had built up so happily? She had always known his love of physical perfection, and from the very first days of Dick's dimpled babyhood she had seconded his efforts to make the boy's body splendidly fit. Together they had trained him, proud of every fresh step of physical achievement and muscular development. And now—the body they had gloried in lay a helpless log for ever. Never to walk, never to ride through the bush and the paddocks that he loved; never to spring to meet them with all his happy soul in his eyes. He groaned aloud in his misery.
"I won't tell her to-day," he said. "To-morrow will do."
Then he saw her coming towards him across the grass, fresh and dainty in her white gown. He went to meet her.
"Mrs. Warner saw you going over here," she said, slipping her hand into his arm. "Dick's asleep, and the nurse bullied me into coming out for some fresh air. He's so well this afternoon, the darling! No pain to speak of, and he's quite merry. The nurse says he's doing splendidly."
"That's something to be thankful for," her husband said. "Are you rested, dear?"