"Ah, you have no right to be so cruel to him," protested Miss Durant.
"It's perfectly natural. Just think how we would feel if we didn't
understand."

The doctor fumbled for his eye-glasses, but not finding them quickly
enough, squinted his eyelids in an endeavour to see the speaker. "And who
are you?" he demanded.

"Why, I am--that is--I am Miss Durant, and--" stuttered the girl.

Not giving her time to finish her speech, Dr. Armstrong asked, "Why are
you here?" while searching for his glasses.

"I did not mean to intrude," explained Constance, flushing, "only it was
my fault, and it hurts me to see him suffer more than seems necessary."

Abandoning the search for his glasses, and apparently unheeding of her
explanation, the doctor began a hasty examination of the now naked boy,
passing his hand over trunk and limbs with a firm touch that paid no heed
to the child's outcries, though each turned the onlooker faint and cold.

Her anxiety presently overcoming the sense of rebuke, the overwrought girl
asked, "He will live, won't he?"

The man straightened up from his examination. "Except for some contusion,"
he replied, "it apparently is only a leg and a couple of ribs broken." His
voice and manner conveyed the idea that legs and ribs were but canes and
corsets. "Take him into the accident ward," he directed to the orderlies,
"and I'll attend to him presently."