the open drawing-room window, Maggie was arranging curtains.
Edwin reluctantly left George for an instant and hurried to the window,
"I say, Maggie, bring a chair or something out, will you? This dashed
kid's fallen and hurt himself."

"I'm not surprised," said Maggie calmly. "What surprises me is that you
should ever have given him permission to scramble over the wall and
trample all about the flower-beds the way he does!"

However, she moved at once to obey.

He returned to George. Then Janet's voice was heard from the other
garden, calling him: "George! Georgie! Nearly time to go!"

Edwin put his head over the wall.

"He's fallen and hurt his back," he answered to Janet, without any
prelude.

"His back!" she repeated in a frightened tone.

Everybody was afraid of that mysterious back. And George himself was
most afraid of it.

"I'll get over the wall," said Janet.

Edwin quitted the wall. Maggie was coming out of the house with a large
cane easy-chair and a large cushion. But George was now standing up,
though still crying. His beautiful best sailor hat lay on the winter
ground.

"Now," said Maggie to him, "you mustn't be a baby!"

He glared at her resentfully. She would have dropped down dead on the
spot if his wet and angry glance could have killed her. She was a
powerful woman. She seized him carefully and set him in the chair, and
supported the famous spine with the cushion.

"I don't think he's much hurt," she decided. "He couldn't make that
noise if he was, and see how his colour's coming back!"

In another case Edwin would have agreed with her, for the tendency of
both was to minimise an ill and to exaggerate the philosophical attitude
in the first moments of any occurrence that looked serious. But now he
honestly thought that her judgement was being influenced by her
prejudice, and he felt savage against her. The worst was that it was
all his fault. Maggie was odiously right. He ought never to have
encouraged the child to be acrobatic on the wall. It was he who had
even put the idea of the wall as a means of access into the child's
head.

"Does it hurt?" he inquired, bending down, his hands on his knees.

"Yes," said George, ceasing to cry.

"Much?" asked Maggie, dusting the sailor hat and sticking it on his
head.

"No, not much," George unwillingly admitted. Maggie could not at any
rate say that he did not speak the truth.

Janet, having obtained steps, stood on the