'Don't be frightened, darling. Let mother look.'

But the child only cried:

'Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!'

She was terrified by the sight of the blood running from her own knee.
Winifred crouched down, with her child of six in her lap, to examine the
knee. Egbert bent over also.

'Don't make such a noise, Joyce,' he said irritably. 'How did she do it?'

'She fell on that sickle thing which you left lying about after cutting
the grass,' said Winifred, looking into his face with bitter accusation
as he bent near.

He had taken his handkerchief and tied it round the knee. Then he lifted
the still sobbing child in his arms, and carried her into the house and
upstairs to her bed. In his arms she became quiet. But his heart was
burning with pain and with guilt. He had left the sickle there lying on
the edge of the grass, and so his first-born child whom he loved so
dearly had come to hurt. But then it was an accident--it was an accident.
Why should he feel guilty? It would probably be nothing, better in two or
three days. Why take it to heart, why worry? He put it aside.

The child lay on the bed in her little summer frock, her face very white
now after the shock, Nurse had come carrying the youngest child: and
little Annabel stood holding her skirt. Winifred, terribly serious and
wooden-seeming, was bending over the knee, from which she had taken his