wall in her elaborate
street-array.

"Who's going to help me down?" she demanded anxiously. She was not so
young and sprightly as once she had been. Edwin obeyed the call.

Then the three of them stood round the victim's chair, and the victim,
like a god, permitted himself to be contemplated. And Janet had to hear
Edwin's account of the accident, and also Maggie's account of it, as
seen from the window.

"I don't know what to do!" said Janet.

"It is annoying, isn't it?" said Maggie. "And just as you were going to
the station too!"

"I--I think I'm all right," George announced.

Janet passed a hand down his back, as though expecting to be able to
judge the condition of his spine through the thickness of all his
clothes.

"Are you?" she questioned doubtfully.

"It's nothing," said Maggie, with firmness.

"He'd be all right in the train," said Janet. "It's the walking to the
station that I'm afraid of... You never know."

"I can carry him," said Edwin quickly.

"Of course you can't!" Maggie contradicted. "And even if you could
you'd jog him far worse than if he walked himself."

"There's no time to get a cab, now," said Janet, looking at her watch.
"If we aren't at Knype, father will wonder what on earth's happened, and
I don't know what his mother would say!"

"Where's that old pram?" Edwin demanded suddenly of Maggie.

"What? Clara's? It's in the outhouse."

"I can run him up to the station in two jiffs in that."

"Oh yes! Do!" said George. "You must. And then lift me into the
carriage!"

The notion was accepted.

"I hope it's the best thing to do," said Janet, apprehensive and
doubtful, as she hurried off to the other house in order to get the
boy's overcoat and meet Edwin and the perambulator at the gates.

"I'm certain it is," said Maggie calmly. "There's nothing really the
matter with that child."

"Well, it's very good of Edwin, I'm sure," said Janet.

Edwin had already rushed for the perambulator, an ancient vehicle which
was sometimes used in the garden for infant Benbows.

In a few moments Trafalgar Road had the spectacle of the bearded and
eminent master-printer, Edwin Clayhanger, steaming up its muddy pavement
behind a perambulator with a grown boy therein. And dozens of persons
who had not till then distinguished the boy from other boys, inquired
about his identity, and gossip was aroused. Maggie was displeased.

In obedience to the command Edwin lifted George i