Sparrows: The Story of an Unprotected GirlNewte, Horace W. C. (Horace Wykeham Can)
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Sparrows: The Story of an Unprotected Girl
Newte, Horace W. C. (Horace Wykeham Can)
London (England) -- Fiction
Five minutes later, whilst Mavis was waiting in suspense, Mrs Trivett
came up to say that the doctor had come again. Mavis had no time to ask
her landlady what she had done with the broker's man, as the doctor
came into the room directly after he had been announced. He was quite a
young doctor, on whom the manners of an elderly man sat incongruously.
He glanced keenly at Mavis as he bowed to her; then, without saying a
word, he fell to examining the child's throat.
"Well?" asked Mavis breathlessly, when he had satisfied himself of its
condition.
"I must ask you a few questions," replied the doctor.
"What do you wish to know?" she asked with anxious heart.
He asked her much about the baby's place of birth, subsequent health
and diet.
When Mavis told him of the Pimlico supplied milk, which she had
sterilised herself, he shook his head.
"That accounts for the whole trouble," he remarked. "You should have
fed him yourself."
"It didn't agree with him, and then it went away," Mavis told him.
"Ah, you had worry?"
"A bit. Do you think he'll pull through?"
"I'll tell you more to-night," he informed her.
Mavis attracted men. The doctor, not being blind to her fascinations,
was not indisposed to linger for a moment's conversation, after he had
treated the baby's throat, during which Mavis thought it necessary to
tell him the old story of the husband in America who was preparing a
home for her.
"Some chap's been low enough to land that charming girl with that
baby," thought the doctor as he walked home. "She's as innocent as they
make 'em, otherwise she wouldn't have told me that silly husband yarn.
If she were an old hand, she'd have kept her mouth shut."
Meanwhile, Mavis had been summoned downstairs to a conference, in which
the broker's man (his name was Gunner), Mrs Trivett, and a man named
Hutton, whom Mr Trivett had fetched, took part.
Mavis was informed that Mr Hutton would lend her the money needed to
get rid of Mr Gunner's embarrassing presence, for which she was to pay
two pounds interest, if repaid in a month, and eight pounds interest a
year during which the capital sum was being repaid by monthly
instalments.
"I will telegraph to Germany," said Mavis. "You shall have the money
next week at latest."
Mr Hutton wanted guarantees; failing these, was Mavis in any kind of
employment?
Mavis told him how she was employed by Mr Devitt.
The man opened his eyes. Had the lady proof of this statement?
Mavis thrust her hand into her pocket, believing she might find the
letter which Montague Devitt had written to Pimlico. She brought out,
instead, the letter the foreman had put into her hand when she was
leaving in reply to Mrs Trivett's summons. The envelope of this was
addressed in Mr Devitt's hand.
"Here's a letter from him here," declared Mavis, as she tore it open to
glance at its contents before passing it on to Hutton.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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