Grace S. Richmond

Time went swinging on, and by and by it came to be Tony Robeson, Junior’s, second Christmas day. He rode down to breakfast on his father’s shoulder, crowing loudly on a gorgeous brown and scarlet rooster, which he had found on his Christmas tree the evening before. He had been put to bed immediately thereafter and had gone to sleep with the rooster in his arms. The fowl had a charmingly realistic crow, operated by a pneumatic device upon which the baby had promptly learned to blow. He performed upon it uninterruptedly throughout breakfast.

“See here, my son,” said Anthony, hurriedly finishing his coffee, “let’s see if you can’t appreciate some of your less voiceful toys. Here’s a rabbit with fine soft ears for you to pull. There’s a train of cars. Let me wind it for you. Your Grandfather Marcy must have expended several good dollars on that—you want to show up an interest in it when he comes out to see you to-day. And here’s Auntie Dingley’s pickaninny boy-doll—well, I don’t blame you for failing to embrace that. Auntie Dingley was born in Massachusetts.”

“Toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty months old infant.”

The boy cast an indifferently polite eye on these gifts as their charms were exhibited to him, and clasped the brown and scarlet rooster to his breast. There were moments, half hours even, when he became sufficiently diverted from his fowl to cease from making it crow, but at intervals throughout the day the family were given to understand once for all that it is not the most expensive and ornate toys which can be relied upon to please a twenty-months-old infant. Even the automobile presented by Dr. Roger Barnes, and warranted to go three times around the room without stopping, was a tame affair to the recipient compared with the rooster’s shrill salute.

“Remember, Tony,” Juliet had said, a month before Christmas, “you are not to give me any expensive personal gift this year. I care for nothing half so much as for making the home complete. If—if—you cared to give me something toward the bathroom fund——”

“All right,” said Anthony promptly, for he had learned by this time to know his wife well. The bathroom fund was dear to her heart. The small room at the front of the house upstairs, which had been left unfurnished, had been temporarily fitted up as a bathroom by sundry ingenious devices in the way of a tin bath and a hot and cold water connection, but a full equipment of the best sort was to be put in as soon as practicable, and there was a growing fund therefor.

On Christmas morning, nevertheless, in addition to a generous addition to the fund, Juliet found beside her plate an exceedingly “personal gift” in the shape of a little pearl-and-turquoise brooch of rare design, bearing the stamp of a superior maker.

“Must I scold you?” she asked, smiling up at him as he stood beside her, watching her face flush with pleasure.

“Kiss me, instead,” he answered promptly. “And don’t expect me to give up making you now and then a real present, even though it has to be a small one. It’s too much fun.”

Beside his own plate he found her gift, a set of histories he had long wanted. It was a beautiful edition, and he would have looked reproachfully at the giver if she had not forestalled him by running around the table to say softly in his ear, both arms about his neck: “Just at Christmas time, dearest, let me have my way.”

The day was a happy one. Mr. Horatio Marcy and Mrs. Dingley arrived on the morning train and stayed until evening. At the Christmas dinner Judith and Wayne Carey and Dr. Roger Barnes were the additional guests, and Mary McKaim was in the kitchen. Dinner over, everybody sat about the fireplace talking, when Juliet came in to carry little Tony off to bed.

“Five minutes more,” begged Dr. Barnes, on whose knee the child sat, a willing captive to the arts of his entertainer. His eyes, bright with the excitement of this great day, were fixed upon the doctor’s face.

“And so”—Barnes continued the story he had begun—“the rooster climbed right up the man’s leg”—the toy obeyed his command and scaled the eminence from the floor where it had been hiding behind a Noah’s ark—“and perched on his knee, and cried”—the rooster crowed lustily and little Tony laughed ecstatically. “Then the rooster flew up on the man’s shoulder and flapped his wings, and all at once he fell right over backwards and tumbled on his head on the floor.—Got to go to bed, Tony? Shall the rooster go too? All right. May I carry him up for you, Juliet? Anthony’s deep in that discussion. Get on my back, old man—that’s the way!”

Everybody looked after the two as the doctor mounted the stairs.

“That rooster has captivated the child more than all the mechanical toys he has had to-day,” said Mrs. Dingley.

“What a handsome fellow he is,” said Carey, his eyes following little Tony till he disappeared. “I never saw a healthier, happier child. How sturdy he is on his legs—have you noticed? He’s saying a good many words, too. It was as good as a play to see him imitate that rooster.”

Juliet’s father and Mrs. Dingley left on an early evening train, and only the three younger guests remained when Juliet came downstairs after putting her boy to bed. She set about gathering up the toys scattered over the floor, and Barnes helped her. In the midst of this labour, during which they all made merry with some of the more elaborate mechanical affairs, Juliet suddenly said “What’s that?” and went to the bottom of the stairs.

“Let me go,” offered Anthony. “He’s probably too excited to get to sleep easily after all this dissipation.—Hullo!—he’s crowing with the rooster yet.”

But Juliet went up, and he followed her, saying from the landing to his guests, “Excuse me for a little. I’ll get the boy quiet, and let his mother come down. I’ve a fine talent for that sort of thing. That rooster will have to be given some soothing syrup—he’s too lively a fowl.”

“I never saw a man fonder of his youngster than Tony,” Carey observed.

“The child is a particularly fine specimen,” the doctor said. “I think I never saw a more ideal development than he shows.”

He began to tell an incident in which little Tony had been involved, when he was interrupted.

“Barnes!”—called Anthony’s voice from the top of the stairs. “Come up here, please.”

There was something in the imperative quality of this summons which made the doctor run up the stairs, two at a time. Judith and Wayne listened. The rooster could still be heard crowing, faintly but distinctly.

“Perhaps he’s grown too excited over it,” Judith suggested. “They ought to take it away.”

Carey went to the bottom of the stairs and listened. There were rapid movements overhead. The doctor’s voice could be heard giving directions through which sounded the steady crowing of the toy. “Hold him so—now move him that way as I thump—now the other——”

Carey turned pale. “He’s got that rooster in his throat,” he said solemnly. The rooster was nearly life-size, but the incongruity of this suggestion did not strike him. Judith hastily rose from her chair and went to him.

“Had we better go up?” he whispered.

“Heavens—no!” Judith clutched his arm. “We couldn’t do any good. The doctor’s there. Such things make me ill. They ought not to have let him have the toy to take to bed with him. How could it get into his throat? Perhaps they are making it crow to divert him. Perhaps he’s hurt himself somehow.”

“He’s got the crow part of that thing in his throat,” Carey persisted in an anxious whisper. “The manufacturers ought to be prosecuted for making a toy that will come apart like that.”

“Don’t stand there,” protested his wife. “Maybe it’s nothing. Come here and sit down.”

But Carey stood still. Presently Anthony came to the head of the stairs.

“Wayne,” said he rapidly, “telephone Roger’s office. Ask the trained nurse, Miss Hughes, to send a messenger with the doctor’s emergency surgical case by the first train—he can catch the 9:40 if he’s quick. Tell Miss Hughes to follow as soon as she can get ready, prepared to stay all night.”

Then he disappeared. His voice had been steady and quiet, but his eyes had showed his friend that the order was given under tension. Carey sprang to the telephone, and his hand shook as he took down the receiver.

Upstairs Roger Barnes, in command, was giving cool, concise orders, his eyes on his little patient. When he had despatched Juliet for various things, including boiling water which she must get downstairs, he said to Anthony in a conversational tone:

“It will probably not be safe to wait till my instruments get here, and there’s no surgeon near enough to call. I’m not going to take any chances on this boy. If I see the necessity I’m going to get into that throat and give him air. I shall want you and Carey to hold him. Juliet must be downstairs.”

Anthony nodded. He did not quite understand; but a few minutes later, when Juliet had brought the boiling water, he suddenly perceived what his friend meant.

“Alcohol, now, please,” said the doctor. When Juliet had disappeared again Barnes drew from his pocket a pearl-handled pocket-knife and tried its blades. “It’s a fortunate thing somebody made me a present of such a good one to-day,” he observed, “but it needs sharpening a bit. Have you an oil-stone handy?”

With tightly shut lips Anthony watched the doctor put a bright edge on his smallest blade, then, satisfied, drop the open knife into the water bubbling over a spirit-lamp. Anthony turned his head away for an instant from the struggling little figure on the bed. Barnes eyed him keenly.

“You’re game, of course?” he said.

Anthony’s eyes met his and flashed fire. “Don’t you know me better than that?”

“All right,” and the young surgeon smiled. “But I’ve seen a medical man himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter,” he went on lightly. “Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all the drugs on the market—and alcohol’s another. I shall want a new hairpin or two—if Juliet has a wire one.—That the alcohol? Thank you. Now if you’ve the hairpins, Juliet—ah—a silver one—all the better.”

This also he dropped into the boiling water. Then he spoke very quietly to Tony’s mother, as she bent over her child, fighting for his breath.

“It’s a bit tough to watch,” he said, “but we’ll have him all right presently. Suppose you go and get his crib ready for him. You might fill some hot-water bags and bottles and have things warm and comfortable.”

The telephone-bell rang below. After a minute Carey dashed upstairs. He looked into the room and spoke anxiously. “The messenger just missed the 9:40. He and the nurse will come on the 10:15.”

“All right,” said the doctor, as if the delay were of small consequence. “We’re going to want your help presently, Carey, I think. Just ask Mrs. Carey to keep Mrs. Robeson with her for a few minutes, if she can.”

Carey went down and gave his wife the message, then he hurried back and stood waiting just outside the door. And all at once the summons came. In a breath the doctor had changed his rÔle. He spoke sharply:

“Now, Robeson—now, Carey—we’ve waited up to the limit. Keep cool—hold him like a rock—”

Wayne Carey came down to his wife, ten minutes later, smiled tremulously, sank into a chair, and fell to crying like a baby—softly, so that he could not be heard.

“But Juliet says he’ll be all right,” murmured Judith unsteadily.

“Yes, yes——” Carey wiped his eyes and blew his nose. “I’m just a little unnerved, that’s all. Lord—and he’s dropped off to sleep as quiet as a lamb—with Barnes holding the gash in his throat open with a hairpin to let the air in. When it comes to emergency surgery I tell you it’s a lucky thing to have an expert in the house. Completely worn out—the little chap. When the nurse comes they’ll get out the whistle and sew the place up. She ought to be here—I’ll go meet that train.”

He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the house. Presently he was back, followed by an erect young woman who wore a long coat over the uniform she had not taken time to change. Carey carried the long black bag she had brought with her.

By and by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of the successful surgeon.

“Well, Mrs. Carey,” said the doctor, smiling, “why not relax that tension a bit? The youngster is right as a trivet.”

“I suppose that’s your idea of being right as a trivet,” Judith retorted. “In bed, with a trained nurse watching you, and a doctor staying all night to make sure.”

“Bless you—what better would you have? If it were any other boy the doctor would have been home and in bed an hour ago, I assure you. Carey—if you don’t stop acting like a great fool I’ll put you to bed too.”

For Carey was wringing Barnes’ hand, and the tears were running unashamed down his cheeks. “I gave him that rooster myself,” he said, and choked.

Upstairs all was quiet. The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same unconventional means, and the doctor, when he left his patient in the hands of his nurse, felt small anxiety for the ultimate outcome.

He said this very positively to the boy’s father and mother, holding a hand of each and bidding them go peacefully to sleep. He would have slipped away then, but they would not let him go. There were no tears, no fuss; but Juliet said, her eyes with their heavy shadows of past suspense meeting his steadily, “Roger, nothing can ever tell you what I feel about this,” and Anthony, gripping his friend’s hand with a grip of steel, added: “We shall never thank the Lord enough for having you on hand, Roger Barnes.”

But when the young surgeon had gone, warm with pleasure over the service he had done those he loved this night, the ones he had left behind found their self-control had reached the ragged edge. Turning to her husband Juliet flung herself into his arms, and met there the tenderest reception she had ever known. So does a common anxiety knit hearts which had thought they could be no tighter bound.

Judith and Wayne Carey, walking along silent streets in the early dawn of the day after Christmas on their way to take their train home, had little to say. Only once Judith ventured an observation to her heavy-eyed companion:

“Surely, such a scene as you went through last night must diminish a trifle that envy you are always possessed with, when you’re at that house.”

But Wayne, staring up at the wintry sky, answered, more roughly than his wife had ever heard him speak: “No—God knows I envy them even at a time like this!”