Domestic fiction; Girls -- Conduct of life -- Juvenile fiction
The doctors came down much more merrily than they went up, and joined in
the dining-room in coffee and dessert while Harry stayed with the
patient.
Mr. Leighton seemed very deeply moved. The thing had hurt him more than
he ventured to say. A remembrance of the white look on his son’s face,
the appearance of the huddled figure in the cab, and the anxiety of not
knowing for a few moments how bad the injury might be, had given him a
great shock. His children were so deeply a part of his life, their
welfare of so much more consequence than his own, that it seemed
dreadful to him that his splendid manly young son had been suddenly
hurt--perhaps beyond remedy. Mrs. Leighton used to remark that she had
always been very thankful that none of her children had ever been
dangerously ill, her husband suffered so acutely from even a trifling
illness undergone by one of them. Now she gazed at him rather
anxiously.
Mr. Maclean told them at last how it had happened. Cuthbert had done
something rather heroic. Mr. Maclean recounted it, it seemed to Elma,
in the tone of a man who thought very little of the reckless way in
which Cuthbert had risked his life, until she discovered afterwards that
he as well as Cuthbert had made a dash to the rescue.
It was a case of a runaway bicycle, with no brakes working, and a girl
on it, terror-stricken, trying to evade death on the Long Hill.
Cuthbert had rushed down to her. Cuthbert had gripped the saddle, and
was putting some strength into his brakes, and actually reaching nearly
a full stop, when the girl swayed and fainted. They were both thrown,
but the girl was quite unhurt. Something had hit Cuthbert on the side
and broken three ribs.
Mabel stared straight at Mr. Maclean.
"Where were you?" she asked.
Mr. Maclean looked gravely at her. "I was somewhere about," he said
with unnecessary vagueness.
"Then you tried to save the girl too," said Elma with immediate
conviction. She greatly admired Mr. Maclean, and resented the manner of
Mabel’s question. "How beautiful of you both," she exclaimed
enthusiastically.
Mr. Maclean seemed a little annoyed.
"I nearly ran into them," he growled. "Cuthbert was the man who did the
clean neat thing."
Mabel stirred her coffee with a dainty air, and then she looked
provokingly at Mr. Maclean. In some way she made Elma believe that she
did not credit that he could be valorous like Cuthbert.
"I think it was most grand-iloquent of you," Elma said to Mr. Maclean by
way of recompense.
The word saved the situation. Where doctors’ assurances had not cleared
anxiety from the brow of Mr. Leighton, nor restored the placidity which
with Mrs. Leighton was habitual, the genuine laugh which followed Elma’s
effort accomplished everything.
"I shall go right up and tell Cuthbert," said Jean.
"No, you won’t! Cuthbert mustn’t laugh," said Mrs. Leighton hurriedly.
"Oh, mummy," said poor Elma.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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