Page:The Breath of Scandal (1922).djvu/65

 "It's the first time anything's happened to father," Marjorie said. "I've never known him to be even sick before."

"He'll come through this, dear little girl," Billy encouraged her. But for a while she only became more frightened.

Gregg, keeping to himself and trying not to think too much about her, heard her whispering, "Spare father!" It was a sort of a prayer.

Then Billy gathered her hands within his own and, bending, kissed hers tenderly. "Dear, dear little Marjorie," he said again, "I'll see that everything possible is done." It seemed to him that somehow, with his size and strength, he could stand between her and anything.

But Gregg was letting himself lapse to no illusions of what might come up to him in a few minutes now; and, as he thought of it, the idea that Marjorie's father might be dead seemed to him a simple event to deal with—provided the fact of his death was all that Marjorie must learn. But he knew that the chances were that, by this time, Charles Hale's private affairs had become public property and that when Marjorie and Billy and he arrived at Clearedge Street, they would find a crowd of curious, babbling people about the building where Mrs. Russell lived; they would find a police ambulance and officers; reporters and flashlight photographers. In that case—well, there was nothing that he could do; nothing that any one could do.

But if it were not yet known, he might be of some use; and the fact that the woman who had sent for the doctor for Mr. Hale had not called a local surgeon, but had summoned Doctor Grantham from far away,