She almost felt as if Nick himself
had uttered the words.
Standing dumbly by the door, she saw the doctor stoop to lay the poor
little body down in the cot, saw Daisy's face of anguish, and the
sudden, wide-flung spread of her empty arms.
The next moment, her woman's instinct prompting her, she sprang
forward; and it was she who caught the stricken mother as she fell.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE CREED OF A FIGHTER
It was growing very hot in the plains. A faint breeze born at sunset
had died away long ago, leaving a wonderful, breathless stillness
behind. The man who sat at work on his verandah with his shirt-sleeves
turned up above his elbows sighed heavily from time to time as if
he felt some oppression in the atmosphere. He was quite a young man,
fair-skinned and clean-shaven, with an almost pathetically boyish look
about him, a wistful expression as of one whose youth still endured
though the zest thereof was denied to him. His eyes were weary and
bloodshot, but he worked on steadily, indefatigably, never raising
them from the paper under his hand.
Even when a step sounded in the room behind him, he scarcely looked
up. "One moment, old chap!" He was still working rapidly as he spoke.
"I've a toughish bit to get through. I'll talk to you in a minute."
There was no immediate reply.
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