The soldier cut him short: "Please to speak plain English, Dr. Grey."
The doctor admitted the very greatest danger.
"Danger—yes," said Fothergill, "but is there any hope? I am not a fool—I sha'n't go in and scare the women: is there any hope?"
The answer was written on the doctor's face. He had known Sissy Langton from the time when she came, a tiny child, to Brackenhill. He shook his head, and murmured something about "even if there were no other injury, the spine—"
Fothergill caught a glimpse of a hideous possibility, and answered with an oath. It was not the profanity of the words, so much as the fury with which they were charged, that horrified the good old doctor. "My dear sir," he remonstrated gently, "we must remember that this is God's will."
"God's will! God's will! Are you sure it isn't the devil's?" said Fothergill. "It seems more like it. If you think it is God's will, you may persuade yourself it's yours, for aught I know. But I'm not such a damned hypocrite as to make believe it's mine."
And with a mechanical politeness, curiously at variance with his face and speech, he lifted his hat to the doctor as he turned back to the farmhouse.
So Sissy's doom was spoken—to linger a few hours, more or less, in helpless pain, and then to die. The sun, which had dawned so joyously, was going down as serenely as it had dawned, but it did not matter much to Sissy now. She was sensible, she knew Mrs. Middleton. When the old lady stooped over her she looked up, smiled faintly and said, "I fell."
"Yes, my darling, I know," Aunt Harriet said.
"Can I go home?" Sissy asked after a pause.