“The doctor thinks he did. But everything depends now on quiet and care.”
“We wanted to speak to you, sir, about the—the accident,” said Farfield with a little hesitation.
“Yes. I have hardly heard how it happened, except that he fell in attempting to collar Jeffreys. Was it not so?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Farfield. “But—”
“Well, what?” asked Mr Frampton, noticing his hesitation.
“We don’t feel sure that it was altogether an accident,” said Farfield.
“What! Do you mean that the boy was intentionally injured?”
“Jeffreys might easily have run round him. Anybody else would. He had the whole field to himself, and no one even near him behind.”
“But was it not Forrester who got in front of him?”
“Of course he tried to collar him, sir,” said Scarfe; “but he’s only a little boy, and Jeffreys is a giant. Jeffreys might have fended him off with his arm, as he did the other fellows who had tried to stop him, or he might have run round him. Instead of that,”—and here the speaker’s voice trembled with indignation—“he charged dead at him, and ran right over him.”