Two men were now holding the pony, and the big fellow was bending over Mary and the ghastly face of the child. Abner pushed him aside. ‘She’s all right . . . she’s all right!’ said Mary. Gladys was crying in shrill, frightened gasps. ‘My leg, mam, oh, my leg!’ she wailed. ‘Try to move your toes, love,’ a woman said. ‘If she can move her toes the bone’s not broken.’ A dozen others clustered round with various advice, while the men stood staring stupidly with pained eyes. Mary was hiding the child’s face in her bosom. Morgan clung crying to her skirts. Her face was terribly set, but she soon recovered her presence of mind. ‘Abner . . . you take Morgan,’ she said. ‘We must find a doctor.’ ‘He lives just round the corner, ma’am,’ a bustling woman cried. ‘The red ’ouse with the trees in front of it. You can see the roof.’ ‘Let me take her. She’s too heavy for you,’ said Abner and Mary surrendered the child, picking up Morgan in her own arms. A curious crowd followed them to the doctor’s house. The Eighteenth Chapter THEY found the doctor just setting out on his morning round. His wife, a forbidding woman, plainly dressed and flat-chested, caught him in the stableyard and brought him back into the surgery. ‘It’s the first accident . . . a little girl,’ she said. ‘Did you ever know the fair without one?’ He followed her in fussily, hoping that there was nothing to keep him, for he had a long list of country visits to get through before the broken heads should begin to roll up in the evening. Abner had laid the child down on a high couch covered with American leather. In the road she had screamed her breath away and now she lay shivering and whimpering softly, almost quiet. ‘Well, what is it?’ said the doctor brusquely. ‘It’s her leg,’ Mary whispered. ‘I’m afraid it’s broken.’ ‘A kick from a horse,’ said the doctor’s wife from the background. ‘Let’s see!’ Mary’s fingers fumbled with the tapes of the child’s drawers. ‘Scissors!’ said the doctor. The sudden touch of steel made Gladys cry out loud, and the first cry of alarm was quickly changed to one of pain. She struggled with the pain and by her movement increased it. The doctor leaned his left arm above her body and held her still. Mary, clasping Gladys’s hands in hers, put down her face to the child’s tear-dabbled cheek. Her own tears were mingled with those of her child, but she made no sound. Abner stood helpless, watching, and behind him also stood the doctor’s wife, gaunt, flat, immobile. In a former state she had been a sister at the North Bromwich Infirmary.