But if it is broken in on first by the failure of his pump, if it be a
pump, I will not answer for the result, Richard."
Dr. Bowdler nodded abruptly, and hurried after Starke. When he entered
the cozy south room which he called the library, he found Starke
standing before an oil-painting of a baby, one the Doctor had lost years
ago.
"Such a bright little thing!" the man said, patting the chubby bare foot
as if it were alive.
"You have children?" Dr. Bowdler asked eagerly.
"No, but I know almost all I meet in the street, or they know me. 'Uncle
Joe' they call me,"--with a boyish laugh.
It was gone in a moment.
"Are they ready?"
"No."
The Doctor hesitated. The man beside him was gray-haired as himself, a
man of power, with a high, sincere purpose looking out of the haggard
scraggy face and mild blue eyes,--how could he presume to advise him?
Yet this Starke, he saw, had narrowed his life down to a point beyond
which lay madness; and that baby had not been in life more helpless or
solitary or unable than he was now, when the trial had come. The Doctor
caught the bony hands in his own fat healthy ones.
"I wish I could help you," he said impetuously.
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