"That's all," said the doctor. "As soon as I wash my hands I'll lay it on the bed."
"Let me," said Kate, hastily drying her own hands. And while he pretended to be engrossed in his ablutions he watched her curiously, as she lifted the baby tenderly and laid it on the bed. As she put it down she bent over and kissed it, murmuring sweet words, as a mother might have done.
"You must have the legs very straight," he said, coming over and standing at the bed's foot that he might the more accurately see them. "In an hour the plaster will be perfectly hard, and then they can move it anywhere. That's a good job, if we did do it ourselves," he said, with a bright smile.
"Oh, may I go and tell the mother?" said Kate, eagerly. "How happy she'll be to see those straight little legs!"
She went out and called the mother in. The woman's excitement had changed into stolidness, and she showed far less feeling in the matter than Kate had done. She looked at the child, without speaking, and then said she guessed she'd better clean up all this muss, and proceeded to set things to rights. Kate was indignant, and showed it in the look she cast at Dr. Brett, who smiled indulgently in reply, and said in a low tone, coming near her, "That manner is half embarrassment. I'm sure she really cares."
While he was wiping and putting up his instruments, Kate went back to the bed, a little whimper having warned her that baby was coming to.
"Don't let him move if you can help it," said the doctor, and she dropped on her knees by the bed, and began to talk to the child in the prettiest way, taking out her watch and showing it to him, holding it to his ear that he might hear it tick, and occupying his attention so successfully that he lay quite still, gazing up at her with great earnest brown eyes, and giving a simultaneous little grin and grunt now and then. Dr. Brett came up and stood behind her for a few moments unnoticed, observing her with a strange scrutiny. "Who would have expected a thing like this from this queer girl?" he said to himself. Then, aloud, he informed Miss Severn that the baby might safely be left to its mother now; and she got up at once, and, seeing he was ready to go, followed him out of the house.
He unfastened her horse and brought the cart to the gate, and, as she mounted to her seat and took the reins, she looked down at him and said impulsively:
"I'm so glad you let me help you. Is this your life—going about all the time doing good and curing evil? I never thought how beautiful it was. If I can ever give you help again, let me do it; won't you?"
"That you shall," he said, and seemed about to add more, but something stopped the words in his throat, and she drove off, wondering what they would have been. The mingled surprise and delight in his eyes made her long to know them. As she turned a bend in the road, she looked back and saw Dr. Brett standing in the door among the children, with a hand on the head of one of the untidy little boys, looking down at him kindly. His figure was certainly both handsome and impressive, and his head and profile fine. She wondered she had never noticed this before—but then she had never before been really interested in him. She wondered suddenly how old he was.