Bawne.... He sat in silence with set teeth, asking himself the bitter question:
"How could I have forgotten—Bawne?"
CHAPTER XIX
BAWNE
As so often happens, the thought of the beloved heralded his well-known thump upon the door-panel. When had the Dop Doctor ever cried, "Come in!" with such a leaden sinking of the heart?
The boy who came in was alert, upright, slim, and strong for his twelve years. You saw him attired in the dress with which we are all familiar—the loose shirt of khaki-brown, with its knotted silk neckerchief of dark blue, the lanyards ending in clasp-knife and whistle, the roomy shorts upheld by a brown leather pouch-belt supporting a serviceable axe, the dark blue stockings turned over at the knee, fitting close to the slim muscular legs, the light strong shoes, the brown smasher hat with the chin-strap, completed the picture of a Scout of whom no patrol need be ashamed. He carried his light staff at the trail, and entering, brought it to an upright position, and saluted smartly. The salute formally acknowledged, he came straight to the table and stood at his father's elbow, waiting, as Saxham feigned to blot a written line. Outwardly composed, the drumming of the man's heart deafened him, and a mist before his eyes blurred the page they were bent upon. Fatherhood gripped him by the throat as in the first moment of his son's separate existence. A thing we prize is never so poignantly precious as when we contemplate the possibility of its ruin or loss.
"Father, you aren't generally pleased when I come bothering you in consulting hours, but this time it is really serious business, no kid, and Honour bright!"
Saxham answered with equal gravity:
"If you have a reasonable excuse for coming, I have said that you may come."
The boy was like him. You saw it as he stood waiting. The vivid gentian-blue eyes were Saxham's, as were the thick throat and prominent under-jaw and the square facial outline. But the plume of hair that swept over the broad forehead was red-brown like Lynette's. The delicate, irregular profile and a sensitive sweetness about the lips were gifts from his mother. The directness of his look, and the tinge of brusqueness in his speech were unconsciously modelled on the father's, as he said, sacrificing sufficient of manly independence to come within the curve of the Doctor's strong arm: