“Will you please get a doctor, quick,” she said, in a strained, quiet voice.  “No, I don’t know who; I’ve only been here two weeks.  We’re strangers!  Bring somebody! anybody! quick!”

Courtland was back in a minute with a weary, seedy-looking doctor who just fitted the street.  All the way he was seeing the beautiful agony of the girl’s face.  It was as if her suffering had been his own.  Somehow he could not bear to think what might be coming.  The little form had lain so limply in his arms!

The girl had undressed the child and put him between the sheets.  He was more like a broken lily than ever.  The long dark lashes lay still upon the cheeks.

Courtland stood back in the doorway, looking at the small table set for two, and pushed to the wall now to make room for the cot.  There was just barely room to walk around between the things.  He could almost hear the echo of that happy, childish voice calling down in the street:  “Bonnie!  Bonnie!  I’ve got supper all ready!”

He wondered if the girl had heard.  And there was the supper!  Two blue-and-white bowls set daintily on two blue-and-white plates, obviously for the something-hot that was cooking over the flame, two bits of bread-and-butter plates to match; two glasses of milk; a plate of bread, another of butter; and by way of dessert an apple cut in half, the core dug out and the hollow filled with sugar.  He took in the details tenderly, as if they had been a word-picture by Wells or Shaw in his contemporary-prose class at college.  They seemed to burn themselves into his memory.

“Go over to my house and ask my wife to give you my battery!” commanded the doctor in a low growl.

Courtland was off again, glad of something to do.  He carried the memory of the doctor’s grizzled face lying on the little bared breast of the child, listening for the heart-beats, and the beautiful girl’s anguish as she stood above them.  He pushed aside the curious throng that had gathered around the door and were looking up the stairs, whispering dolefully and shaking heads: 

“An’ he was so purty, and so cheery, bless his heart!” wailed one woman.  “He always had his bit of a word an’ a smile!”

“Aw!  Them ottymobbeels!” he heard another murmur.  “Ridin’ along in their glory!  They’ll be a day o’ reckonin’ fer them rich folks what rides in ’em!  They’ll hev to walk!  They may even have to lie abed an’ hev their wages get behind!”

The whole weight of the sorrow of the world seemed suddenly pressing upon Courtland’s heart.  How had he been thus unexpectedly taken out of the pleasant monotony of the university and whirled into this vortex of anguish!  Why had it been?  Was it just happen that he should have been the one to have gone to the old woman and made her toast, and then been called upon to pray, instead of Tennelly or Bill Ward or any of the other fellows?  And after that was it again just coincidence that he should