him that he should
come to confessional before this little boy. He believed that he
had judged too hastily, and he was come to make it right. "Maybe
you were lonesome," he said. "Maybe you wanted Mother."

David said nothing, and the Doctor went on with that wistful
tenderness which comes to us when we feel we have not been just
with those we love.

"You _do_ like me, don't you, David?"

But the little boy could not answer; he was crying so.

CHAPTER X

THE NIP OF GUILT

Little David was not well; little David was hot and red.

After he had been gently laid in the crib he turned restlessly,
and from time to time a gasping sob shook his whole body, for he
had cried himself to sleep. He had fallen into a fitful slumber
while in the Doctor's buggy, and had not awakened when carried
into the house.

"A little feverish," said Mother, as she pressed her cool hand
upon his forehead.

The Doctor said nothing, but in his eyes, as he bent over the
little boy, there was something sinister. It was his fighting
face, and it was saying to David:

"You shall not be sick, little boy. I won't have it."

All the weariness of the man was gone; all his dreary
discouragement was gone. He stood erect, a soldier ready to do
battle against disease which for these past weeks had been
choking out the life of little children.

As the Doctor hurried away he was upbraiding himself for having
been absent from his patients not less than three whole hours.
Gross negligence, this! He had no right to play so long with
David, and now he would not take the time to tell Miss Eastman of
all the great things they had been doing.

But indeed no words of explanation were required to tell her of
one thing that had been done. Without any assistance she soon
discovered a substantial reason why her little boy was so
restless, and this reason proved to be a miniature. She found
the two pieces of it hid away in his blouse at the very place
where they would be most uncomfortable to lie upon. But even
after she had relieved David of this source of trouble, he still
turned and tossed and talked in his sleep.

She could not understand what he was saying, but the face painted
on porcelain seemed easily understood. How, Miss Eastman asked
herself, had he come by that picture? Who had given it to her
little boy, and what had he been told about the beautiful face?

An impulse had suddenly come upon the woman to hide it away, or
better yet, to