"
Janet Tosswill got up from her little boy's bed. She lit a candle. Poor
Timmy! She had never seen the boy looking as he was looking now; he
seemed utterly spent with misery.
"I'll tell you what I'll do, my dear. I'll speak to Dr. O'Farrell myself
in the morning, and I'll ask him whether something can't be done in the
way of a reprieve. I'll tell him we don't mind paying for Josephine to be
sent away for a bit to a vet."
Hope, ecstatic hope, flashed into Timmy's tear-stained face. "You mean to
a man like Trotman?"
"Yes, that's what I do mean. But I mustn't raise false hopes. I fear Dr.
O'Farrell has made up his mind; he promised Mrs. Crofton the cat should
be shot. Still, I'll do my _very_ best."
Timmy put his skinny arms round his mother's neck.
"I'm glad you're my mother, Mum," he muttered, "and not my step-mother."
She smiled for the first time. "That's rather a double-edged compliment,
if I may say so! But I suppose it's true that I would do a good deal more
for you than I would for any of the others."
"I didn't mean _that_," exclaimed Timmy, shocked. "I only meant that I
wouldn't love you as well. I don't mean ever to be a step-father--I shall
start a lot of boys and girls of my own.
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