The Doctor fled discomfited, and shut the front door in their faces. He did not understand boys, and he did not like them, and he would not have minded if he had never had to meet another boy as long as he lived. In a very few moments, however, he came to the conclusion that although boys were pretty bad, girls could beat them easily, with several points to spare.
His man was walking the cob up and down outside, and the trap was not in sight when Dr. Hurst shut the front door behind him. The occurrence was particularly unfortunate, for as he stood waiting on the steps the whole of the junior hockey team came strolling round the corner of the house. This in itself was sufficiently embarrassing to the young man who stood there; and he hailed the appearance of his trap with deep and earnest satisfaction. But he was not to be allowed to escape so easily. The sound of wheels made the children look round; and some one suddenly called out--'It's the Doctor!' The next moment he found himself, greatly to his consternation, in the middle of a throng of excited young ladies, all in extremely short skirts and all armed with hockey clubs, who were clamouring loudly and persistently to know if Barbara Berkeley was out of danger.
Probably it would never have happened if it had not been the last day of the term, when a sense of unusual liberty prevailed. Certainly, if it had been any other day the hockey team would not have been wandering round by the front door at all, but would have gone straight to the nine-acre field through the orchard at the back. But the Doctor knew nothing of all this. He only realised that the girls were finishing what the boys had begun, and that in another minute he should lose his temper very badly indeed.
Most eager of all was a child with a freckled face and reddish-coloured hair, who somehow seemed familiar to him, though he could not remember where he had met her before. She came right up to where he stood helplessly, with his right foot placed on the carriage-step; and she raised her voice shrilly above all the others.
'May I see her before she gets worse?' she implored sentimentally. 'I should never forgive myself, Mary Wells says I shouldn't, if anything happened to her, and----'