Page:Quinby and Son (1925).pdf/49

 Then I began to shout, and railroad men came, and they picked him up."

"Where is he now?" Mrs. Quinby asked. She was holding a handkerchief to her mouth, and shaking her head, and murmuring broken words.

"They sent for Dr. Elman, and when the doctor came Bill was put on a flat car, and the doctor got up with him, and then they started for the hospital in the city."

Run over! Those two words kept pounding through Bert's stunned mind. Maybe Bill might die. He knew that Dolf was going, still crying, still shivering, and that his mother had put his raincoat about the wet, miserable boy. But these things made little impressions upon him. Run over! His shocked mind tried to straighten out the confusion of a horrified thought. Then his mother, having piloted Dolf on his way, came back from the door.

"You see it now, Bert?" she asked.

He could only nod.

"Who first suggested this train riding?"

His face went white. "I don't know."

But he did know. He had been the first to suggest the possibility. When he got to his room he threw himself across the bed, and gripped the coverlet with his hands, and stared, wide-eyed, across the room. Bill Harrison with one leg, hobbling through life on a crutch.

"Just like Peg Scudder," Bert whispered hoarsely; "just like Peg Scudder."