"'I was leaving the Cadozas' cottage on the Plank Road half an hour ago,' he said. 'A little way along I saw a man, who had been walking ahead of me, stagger and sprawl in the mud. He wasn't conscious when I got to him. He was little—I picked him up quite easily and got him back into the Cadozas' cottage. He still wasn't conscious when the doctor came. He gave him things. We got him in bed there. And then he spoke. He asked us to hunt up a little boy somewhere in Friendship Village, who belonged to him. And he said the boy's name was Chris.'
"It seemed like it was to Alex Proudfit's interested lifting of eyebrows rather than to Robin's exclamation of pity that Insley answered.
"'I'm sorry it was necessary to trouble you,' he says, 'but Chris ought to go at once. I'll take him down now.'
"'That man,' Robin says, 'the father—is he ill? Is he hurt? How badly is he off?'
"'He's very badly off,' says Insley, 'done for, I'm afraid. It was in a street brawl in the City—it's his side, and he's lost a good deal of blood. He walked all the way back here. A few hours, the doctor thought it would be, at most.'
"Robin stood up and spoke like what she was saying was a take-for-granted thing.
"'Oh,' she says, 'poor, poor little Chris. Alex, I must go down there with him.'
"Alex looks over at her, incredulous, and spoke so: 'You?' says he. 'Impossible.'
"I was just getting ready to say that of course I'd go with him, if that was anything, when from somewheres that he'd gone with the puppy, Chris spied Insley, and come running to him.