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“Is that Mr. Sims?”

“No, ma’am, I’m one of the workmen.”

She has left her kitchen door open, and as the light streams out he can see she is a thin woman with an anxious look.

“I thought it was Mr. Sims, the watchman. My baby is threatened with convulsions. I wanted him to run for the doctor at the end of the terrace; I daren’t leave him, and my sister’s lame. Will you go? It isn’t far!”

She is listening, and though he hears nothing, she darts off calling, “There he’s off, do go, do go. Say Mrs. Rogers’s baby, Hawthorn House, No. 23.”

He stands a moment irresolute; the shadow moves across the blind, and a second smaller shadow seems to wave across it; or was it only the rising wind flicking the blind? and is it fancy, or did not a stifled cry reach him; and was it from that room it came or from Mrs. Rogers’s baby? The little man is shaking with anxiety; he feels as if some malignant fate in the shape of Mrs. Rogers’s baby is playing tricks with him, to bring about a catastrophe he has stayed to avert. He is torn both ways; he can offer no excuse for not going; he dare not explain the secret dread that has kept him here supperless in the rain watching the house where the three motherless children sleep. He turns and runs stumbling over the rubbish into the side street and arrives breathless at the corner house where the red lamp burns at the gate-rings–what a time they keep him–it seems ages, and visions keep tumbling kaleidoscopically through his brain; the very red of the light adds colour to the horrid tragedy he sees enacted in excited fury.

“The doctor is out; won’t be back for some time; there’s a Dr. Phillips round the corner,” explains the smart maid–the door slams to.

“Yes, Dr. Phillips is in; you must wait a minute,” ushering him into a waiting-room. He sits on the edge of the chair with his wet hat in his hand. Two other people are waiting: a girl with a swelled face, and a sickly-looking man.

A door opens, someone beckons, the man goes in. He looks at the clock–five minutes pass, seven, ten–each seems an hour–fifteen–and the woman’s face as she went in, and the frightened children (his mate questioned them at tea-time), and the shadow on the blind of the room they slept in! Why should Mrs. Rogers’s baby go and get convulsions just this particular night? seems as though it were to be–seventeen; no, he won’t wait any longer. The strange, inexplicable fear clutching the little man’s soul gives him courage, though the well-furnished house awes him; he slips out into the hall, opens the door, and rings the bell. The same girl answers it.

“Well I never! W’y, I just let yo
u in. Carn’t you wait yet turn–the idea!”

A pale young man with spectacles coming down the stairs asks:

“What is it you want, my man?” The girl tosses her head and goes downstairs.

“I can’t wait, sir; Mrs. Rogers’s baby, ‘Awthorn ‘Ouse, No. 23 Pelham Road, round the corner, got the convulsions. She wants the doctor as soon as ‘e can.”

“All right, I’ll be round in a second.”

The little man hurries back, trying to add up the time he has been away–twenty-five minutes, it must be twenty-five, perhaps twenty-seven. The yard door of Mrs. Rogers’s house is open, and a girl peers out as he runs up the lane.

“The doctor woz out; Dr. Phillips is comin’ at onst!” His eyes rest on the window of the next house as he speaks. It is dark up there and silent. He pays no heed to the thanks of the girl, and he hears the tap of her crutch up the flagged path with a gasp of relief.