y were
hungry.

"Oh, do look!" Gwen nudged Tony excitedly. "There's a boy with nothing
on his head tearing along in the rain! He will fall over those wobbling
ducks if he doesn't look out!"

"I do believe he is making for our house!" slowly said Tony, as he
stared out eagerly.

"There's somebody taken suddenly ill, that's it! He's coming for Pater!"
observed Traffy, a bright little urchin who had just stepped out of
petticoats into a sailor suit and Latin.

"Oh, oh! it's one of the Carew boys from Tile House, and he is coming in
here!" Trissy, the youngest, whispered, in an awestruck voice, and she
shrank back from the window. The four Carews of the White House had
brooded to the full as much as the young folk of the Tile House over the
estrangement between their Fathers, though they had never dared to ask
their parents any questions about the matter.

All the children knew this much, that old Grandpapa had been Doctor Mark
Carew of Allonby Edge, and when he died his two sons succeeded to his
practice as partners. In time the young doctors married, and the elder
children remembered dimly that the Tile House and the White House had
been like one home with two roofs.

Then came the mysterious quarrel that froze up that "good and joyful
thing, dwelling together in unity." It was all so sad and heart-breaking
that nobody ever ventured to question the two brothers thus living apart
in enmity. The more you love anyone, the more terrible a thing it is to
quarrel with that person.

So the breach had gone on widening with the years, and the little
Carews had grown out of all knowledge of each other, especially as they
bicycled every day to different schools in the county town. It was only
in church indeed that they kept up any sort of acquaintance with each
other's looks.

[Illustration]

"Yes, it's one of the other Carews," Tony said gravely. "And Father's in
the surgery: he drove up five minutes ago. What can be the matter? That
boy is tearing at the surgery bell. Listen!"

With their hearts in their mouths the Carews tip-toed along the passage
leading to the surgery-door, which was shut fast. There seemed to be a
dreadful silence in the house. Mother was upstairs with the fretful
baby of the family, and there was nobody to run to.

Behind the close-shut surgery-door a strange scene was going on. Sitting
well back in his consulting-chair, his hands spread out, finger to
finger, thumb to thumb, Doctor George was