From one of the dug-out refuges Saxham now saw Lynette Mildare coming, making her swift way between the knots of frowsy refugees, the negro women-servants squatting over the little cooking-fires, the pallid children swarming on the narrow pathways.
"Dr. Saxham." Her simple brown holland skirt and thin linen blouse hung loosely upon her. Her face, too, had grown thinner, and looked tired. But the eyes were no longer unnaturally dilated, and the face had a more healthful pallor. "Mrs. Greening begged me to look out for you. She is so anxious about Berta. We have been doing everything we can, but I am afraid the child is seriously ill. It is the third shelter from the end, south side." She pointed out the place.
He had lifted his hat with his short, brusque salute. His vivid eyes wore a preoccupied look, his mobile nostrils angrily sniffed the villainous air.
"I'll come directly, Miss Mildare. But—who can expect children to keep healthy under conditions as insanitary as these?"
"It is—horrible!" Disgust was in her face. "But many of the women are as ignorant as the Kaffirs and Cape boys, and they and the coolie sweepers won't carry away refuse any more unless they're paid."
"You are sure of this?" His tone was curt and official.
"I am almost certain," she told him. "I have heard some of the women complaining that the charges grew higher every day. And, when I asked one of the boys why he did not do the work properly, he was—rude.... Oh, don't punish him!"
He had not said a word, but a white-hot spark had darted from his blue eye, and his grim jaws had clamped ominously together.
"It is my duty to put down insubordination, and chastise inefficiency where I encounter it. May I ask you to point out the fellow who behaved insolently?"
She said: "I—I think he is head of the carting-gang. A Kaffir boy they call Jim Gubo."