When I found him, his consternation was great, and he quite agreed with me that I had better go up that very afternoon and take charge of Dora, since Baby Jack answered for it that Randall Horsman would be most grateful and thankful.

Harold found out the hours for the trains, and did everything to expedite me.  He made it certain that poor little Dora had not been vaccinated.  When she was born, no doctor lived within sixty miles of Boola Boola, and nobody had ever thought of such a thing.

“And you, Harry?” I asked, with a sudden thrill of alarm.

“Do you expect me to remember?” he asked with a smile.

I begged him to look for the moons upon his arm, and at any rate to undergo the operation again, since, even if it had been done in his infancy, the effect might have worn out, and it was only too probable that in the case of a child born on board a sailing vessel, without a doctor, it had been forgotten.  He gave in to my solicitude so far as to say that he would see about it, but reminded me that it was not he who was going into the infection.  Yes, I said, but there was that lock of hair and the worsted cuff.  Such things did carry contagion, and he ought to burn them at once.

“Poor Dora!” he said, rather indignantly.

Oh that I had seen them burnt!  Oh that I had taken him to Dr. Kingston’s for vaccination before I went away, instead of contenting myself with the unmeaning, half-incredulous promise to “see about it!” by which, of course, he meant to mention it when George Yolland came home.  Yet it might have made no difference, for he had been fondling and smoothing that fatal curl all the time we were talking over the letter.

He came to the station with me, gave me the kindest messages for Dora, arranged for my telegraphing reports of her every day—­took care of me as men will do when they seem to think their womankind incapable without them, making all the more of me because I did not venture to take Colman, whom I sent to visit her home.  He insisted on Mr. Ben Yolland, who had been detained a day behind his brother, going in a first-class carriage with me.  I leant out at the window for the parting kiss, and the last sight I had of my dear Harold, as the train steamed out of the station, was bearing on his shoulder a fat child—­a potter’s—­who had just arrived by the train, and had been screaming to his mother to carry him, regardless of the younger baby and baskets in her arms.  It might well make my last sight of him remind me of St. Christopher.