Neither have I the instruments here."
"What shall we do?" demanded Carteret. "We have called all the best
doctors, and none are available."
The young doctor's brow was wrinkled with thought. He knew a doctor who
could perform the operation. He had heard, also, of a certain event at
Carteret's house some months before, when an unwelcome physician had
been excluded from a consultation,--but it was the last chance.
"There is but one other doctor in town who has performed the operation,
so far as I know," he declared, "and that is Dr. Miller. If you can get
him, he can save your child's life."
Carteret hesitated involuntarily. All the incidents, all the arguments,
of the occasion when he had refused to admit the colored doctor to his
house, came up vividly before his memory. He had acted in accordance
with his lifelong beliefs, and had carried his point; but the present
situation was different,--this was a case of imperative necessity, and
every other interest or consideration must give way before the imminence
of his child's peril. That the doctor would refuse the call, he did not
imagine: it would be too great an honor for a negro to decline,--unless
some bitterness might have grown out of the proceedings of the
afternoon. That this doctor was a man of some education he knew; and he
had been told that he was a man of fine feeling,--for a negro,--and
might easily have taken to heart the day's events. Nevertheless, he
could hardly refuse a professional call,--professional ethics would
require him to respond.
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