"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot as if it were alive.
"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.
"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle Joe' they call me,"—with a boyish laugh.
It was gone in a moment.
"Are they ready?"
"No."
The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard scraggy face and mild blue eyes,—how could he presume to advise him? Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.
"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.
Starke looked in his face keenly.
"For what? How?"