"How's the kid this evening, eh."
Hal covered his face and groaned. Parsons looked at me significantly. A few minutes later we had arrived at our destination, and were taken immediately to Stanhope's study, where Eliot, the local practitioner who had charge of the case, awaited us. He gave us a brief account of the accident and described the child's present condition.
"We will go up to see him now," said Parsons, in his brief, concise voice. We went upstairs and entered the splendid and spacious nurseries occupied by the sick child.
He was in the inner nursery, lying on a little white bed, which had been drawn almost into the centre of the room. His mother stood at the head of the bed, with her hands clasped, and a long, white dressing-gown covering her from her throat to her feet. Her face was as white as her dress. She came forward to greet both Parsons and myself, offering us both a hand, but not uttering a syllable.
"Will you leave us for a little?" I said to the mother. "We will come to you as soon as we have made our examination and formed our verdict."
"I would rather stay with the child," she said.
I glanced round at Stanhope. It would be difficult to force the mother to leave her apparently dying child, and yet we could not conduct our examination to the best advantage in her presence. He understood me, strode forward and touched his wife on her arm.
"Come, Kitty," he said. "You can come back as soon as ever the doctors have given their verdict. It is but fair now to leave them alone with the child."
She did not utter another word of remonstrance, but placed her hand with a touching sort of submission in Stanhope's. He led her immediately from the room.
It was not until she was gone that I ventured to take a long look at the little heir of Chartelpool. He had evidently scarcely moved or shown the faintest signs of life since the moment of the accident. His lovely cherub face looked as if it were carved in marble; his round arms and small hands were bare. An aureole of bright hair surrounded his forehead. He was a noble-looking child—sturdy of limb and of great size for his age.
Eliot began to describe the nature of the accident. Parsons listened attentively, and then the work of examination began. We turned the child very tenderly on his face and hands, the spine was carefully felt by the sensitive fingers of the surgeon. The little head was tapped here and there. Then the child was laid once more on his back, and Parsons, sitting down, motioned to us to do likewise.
"There is evidently severe injury to the brain," he began. "I should say there is a fracture of the base of the skull, accompanied with hemorrhage."
He paused here. His next words came out slowly.
"And yet, serious as all this is," he continued, "I think the child may survive if the hemorrhage is not progressing. I have seen similar cases recover, but the worst of it is that in children there is a great fear that the recovery will be with impaired intellect, more
