Miller's refusal to go with him was pure, elemental justice; he
could not blame the doctor for his stand. He was indeed conscious of a
certain involuntary admiration for a man who held in his hands the power
of life and death, and could use it, with strict justice, to avenge his
own wrongs. In Dr. Miller's place he would have done the same thing.
Miller had spoken the truth,--as he had sown, so must he reap! He could
not expect, could not ask, this father to leave his own household at
such a moment.
Pressing his lips together with grim courage, and bowing mechanically,
as though to Fate rather than the physician, Carteret turned and left
the house. At a rapid pace he soon reached home. There was yet a chance
for his child: perhaps some one of the other doctors had come; perhaps,
after all, the disease had taken a favorable turn,--Evans was but a
young doctor, and might have been mistaken. Surely, with doctors all
around him, his child would not be permitted to die for lack of medical
attention! He found the mother, the doctor, and the nurse still grouped,
as he had left them, around the suffering child.
"How is he now?" he asked, in a voice that sounded like a groan.
"No better," replied the doctor; "steadily growing worse. He can go on
probably for twenty minutes longer without an operation."
"Where is the doctor?" demanded Mrs. Carteret, looking eagerly toward
the door. "You should have brought him right upstairs. There's not a
minute to spare! Phil, Phil, our child will die!"
Carteret's heart swelled almost to bursting with an intense pity.
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