"Prison rules!" exclaimed Mrs. French with wrath rare in her. "I'll go straight to the Judge myself."
"Get in," said the doctor, taking up the lines.
"Where are you going? We can't leave these poor things in this way," the tears gathering in her eyes and her voice beginning to break.
"Not much," said the doctor briskly; "we are evidently in for another scrap. I don't know where you will land me finally, but I'm game to follow your lead. We'll go to the jail."
Mrs. French considered a moment. "Let us first take these children to the hospital and then we shall meet Paulina at the jail."
"All right," said the doctor, "tell them so. I am at your service."
"You are awfully good, Doctor," said the little lady, her sweet smile once more finding its way to her pale face.
"Ain't I, though?" said the doctor. "If the spring were a little further advanced you'd see my wings sprouting. I enjoy this. I haven't had such fun since my last football match. I see the finish of that jail guard. Come on."
Within an hour the doctor and Mrs. French drove up to the jail. There, at the bleak north door, swept by the chill March wind, and away from the genial light of the shining sun, they found Paulina and her children, a shivering, timid, shrinking group, looking pathetically strange and forlorn in their quaint Galician garb.
The pathos of the picture appeared to strike both the doctor and his friend at the same time.