Lanse turned to Doctor Churchill, who stood upon the porch beside him, hat and case in hand.

“I’m mighty thankful you were so near,” he said.

“Doctor Forester hasn’t given you much choice,” said the other man, smiling.  “I did my best to give you the chance of having some one of the physicians you know here in town take charge of the case, but he insisted on my keeping it.  I should like, however, to be sure that you are satisfied.  You don’t know me at all, you know.”

The steady eyes were looking keenly at Lanse, and he felt the sincerity in the words.  He returned the scrutiny without speaking for an instant; then he put out his hand.

“Somehow I feel as if I do,” he said, slowly.  “Anyhow, I’m going to know you, and I’m glad of the chance.”

“Thank you.”  Doctor Churchill shook hands warmly and went down the steps.  “I will come over for a minute about ten o’clock,” he added, “to make sure that Miss Birch is resting as quietly as we can hope for to-night.”

Lanse watched the broad-shouldered, erect figure cross the lawn and disappear in the office door of the old house near by; then he turned.

“Well, we’re in a sweet scrape now, that’s certain,” he said gloomily to himself, as he marched up-stairs.

At the top he encountered his young brother Justin.  That twelve-year-old stood awaiting him, his face so disconsolate that in spite of himself Lanse smiled.

“Cheer up, youngster,” he said.  “It’s pretty tough, but as Doctor Forester says, it might be worse.  Want to go in with me and see sister a minute?”

But Justin got hold of his arm and held him back.  “Lanse, I’ve got to tell you something,” he begged.  “Please come here, in your room a minute.”

Lanse followed, wondering.  Justin, although a healthy and happy boy enough, was apt to take things seriously, and sometimes needed to be joked out of singular notions.  In Lanse’s room Justin carefully locked the door.

“It’s all my fault, Celia’s knee,” he said, going straight to the point, as was his way.  His voice shook a little, but he went steadily on.  “She sent me down cellar after pickles, and I sat on the top of the stairs finishing up a banana before I went.  I’ve been down there to look, and—­and the banana skin was there—­all mashed.  It was what did it.”

He choked, and turned away to the window.

“You left a banana skin on those stairs?” Lanse half-shouted.

“Yes.”

“Right there, at the top—­when Delia almost broke her neck more than once going down those stairs only last winter, just because they’re so steep and narrow?”

Just nodded.

“And you fell on a banana skin once yourself, and wanted to thrash the fellow who left it!”

Just’s chin sank lower and lower.

Lanse eyed him a moment, struggling with a desire to seize the boy and punish him tremendously.  But as his quick wrath cooled a trifle in his effort to control himself and act wisely, something about Just’s brave acknowledgment, where silence would have covered the whole thing, appealed to him.  The thought of the way the absent father and mother had met every confession of his own that he could remember in a life of prank-playing softened the words which came next to his lips.