“I am glad it was not I who was with you,” declared Nora. “I cannot stand blood, and I certainly should have fainted, and what would you have done then?”
“Not you,” declared Jack. “That sort of thing does not go with your stock. God knows what would have happened to me if I had had a silly fool with me, for the blood was pumping out all over me. But, thank God, I had a woman with a brave heart and clever hands.”
When the doctor came, Mrs. Waring-Gaunt went in to assist him, but when the ghastly bloody spectacle lay bare to her eyes she found herself grow weak and hurried to the kitchen where the others were.
“Oh, I am so silly,” she said, “but I am afraid I cannot stand the sight of it.”
Kathleen sprang at once to her feet. “Is there no one there?” she demanded with a touch of impatience in her voice, and passed quickly into the room, where she stayed while the doctor snipped off the frayed patches of skin and flesh and tied up the broken arteries, giving aid with quick fingers and steady hands till all was over.
“You have done this sort of thing before, Miss Gwynne?” said the doctor.
“No, never,” she replied.
“Well, you certainly are a brick,” he said, turning admiring eyes upon her. He was a young man and unmarried. “But this is a little too much for you.” From a decanter which stood on a side table he poured out a little spirits. “Drink this,” he said.
“No, thank you, Doctor, I am quite right,” said Kathleen, quietly picking up the bloody debris and dropping them into a basin which she carried into the other room. “He is all right now,” she said to Mrs. Waring-Gaunt, who took the basin from her, exclaiming,
“My poor dear, you are awfully white. I am ashamed of myself. Now you must lie down at once.”