They had “taken the liberty” – they told Joanna, upon her arrival when the bad news was poured out – of using her bedroom as the sick-chamber. It was the most suitable in the house, and they could not bear to have the child taken to a nursing home. Already the stripped walls were hung with sheets drenched in carbolic, and the scrubbed kitchen table stood shockingly in the middle of a bare floor.

During the week that followed, Joanna, sleeping on the sofa in her sitting-room, gave every minute of her time and every ounce of her strength to the racked household. She cooked, ran errands, found a substitute for Trissie at the laundry, interviewed customers downstairs for Mr. Moon, helped to tend the unwitting Edvina. And so long as all went well with Roddy she was content. While the distraction of illness lasted, her own essential life stayed apart, suspended. It was a respite.

And the operation was a success. Roddy emerged from it his entire, bright self. It seemed there was no further cause for anxiety. Yet Trissie’s face remained tense and ashen as before, nor would Edwin leave the bedside.

That night, though she was very weary, Joanna lay sleepless. With Roddy out of danger her own troubles were again unleashed, and now like hounds they threatened her. She stayed broad awake till after sunrise. Then, when she had newly fallen into a drowse, came a touch on her shoulder. She sat up instantly. It was Trissie, who said a low word and was gone. Joanna leapt up, threw on her dressing-gown, and followed.

An hour before dawn – nearly twenty hours after the surgeon’s work was satisfactorily completed – the child had begun to look strange about the eyes. Then he had slipped by slow, obstinate degrees into unconsciousness. Now he was in a coma. “Coma,” was the word that had remained with Joanna when Trissie had spoken and vanished.

It was “a most uncommon case,” declared the puzzled physician (the surgeon, having performed his task and being busy elsewhere, did not appear). But he thought they would “pull the little chap through.”

Trissie’s eyes widened in murderous disbelief till the white glared all round the irises, but she carried out every direction submissively and well, winning the doctor’s praise. There never had been such a nurse. As for Edwin Moon, through each unfolding horror of activity around the bed, he only sat with his head hanging, looking on without hope, quite passive.

Twice in the course of the day they managed to rouse the boy so that he uttered conscious and natural cries of protest. And after the second of these times he lay awhile quiet, and was his composed self as if he would recover.

The father raised his head then and gazed into his son’s open eyes. And Roddy, as if he had been waiting for this, smiled back at him contentedly.