CHAPTER VIII.
The doctor had fallen into more than one fit of musing since the one that carried him three doors beyond his destination on the morning Enoch’s wheels were being fitted, and the result was, that he had come to a determination. But as he always kept his determinations very quietly to himself until it was time to act upon them, no one was any the wiser for it as yet. But at last, when the snow-banks had dwindled away under the spring sun, until only a stray mound was left here or there, and the earth began to peep out once more, brown and bare, the doctor made up his mind that the time had come. He had just arrived at that conclusion, when his office-door opened, and some one came softly in. He knew the step, and could see the tall, gaunt form of old Joan, the housekeeper, with her apron-strings tied in a hard knot, her silver-rimmed spectacles, and her high-crowned cap, just as well as if he had raised his eyes from his book. But Joan never liked to be noticed when she came in; so he went on reading, with his feet in the chair before him, as though no one were within a thousand miles.
Joan had only come to see about the fire, that was all; at least all she meant should be understood; but the doctor knew very well, from the endless brushing she was giving the hearth, that she had something on her mind that would bring her round in front of his chair if he only gave her time enough, and this suited him very well, as he had something to say to her himself. Joan had followed the doctor from the time he needed a nurse until he required a housekeeper, and she would have been almost ready to quarrel even with him, if she had heard him talk to Creepy about their owning shares in the world together, for it was very much her opinion that the world was made for the doctor exclusively; and if there were a few other people in it, that was principally for the purpose of supplying him with a round of patients.
“Ah but he’s a braw laddie, and ony auld heart might weel be proud o’ raising sic a bairn,” she said to herself, as she glanced toward him once or twice while she still brushed vigorously away at the hearth, “though it’s true I never taught him the fashion he has o’ taking the chair before him that’s almost higher than his head to tilt his feet in, like a parrot fingering the trammels o’ his cage. It’s no so unco handsome as the rest o’ him, but what can a young man do, shut up in a room like this, with never a fair face to smile on him from ane years end to anither; and if he were to bring a young wife hame wi’ him, wha kens where old Joan might find hersel’ then? Na, na, it’s no change o’ that kind I’m asking, but some things ought to gae differently, for the pride o’ the house, and if he doesna see it for himsel’, why then old Joan maun e’en speak her ain thocht, that is a’.”
But the speaking did not seem so easy after all, and Joan had come fairly round before the doctor’s chair, as he had expected, hearth-broom in hand, without getting her words into shape.
This wouldn’t do. He had something to settle with Joan himself, and he must catch her in a propitious frame: at the same time he knew that if he spoke first, everything would go wrong; so without looking up from his book, he carelessly touched another that lay on the chair before him, with his foot, and down it went upon the floor, and the flood gates were opened.
“Hoot, mon!” exclaimed Joan, stooping to pick it up, and wiping it tenderly with the corner of her apron, “hoot, mon, and canna ye be content wi’ finding yoursel’ maister o’ a book like this, that not one out o’ ten thousand o’ your neebors has learning eno’ to ken the meaning o’ the very cover itsel’, that ye maun toss it under foot in sic a fashion? It’s no that I begrudge gathering it up again, but I dinna like aught belonging to yoursel’ to meet wi’ disrespect, and that’s what I’m fearing ilka day will be coming to the house, a’though no fault o’ mine. Not that I fash mysel’ sae muckle if folk maun e’en mind ither folk’s affairs, but I’m an auld woman to be keeping up the credit o’ an establishment like this.”
“You want some one to help you, Joan?”
“Help me!” exclaimed Joan indignantly, brushing her apron off sidewise with both hands, as if to brush away the aspersion, “ye ken weel enough Joan wants nae help, nor ever will, while her two hands can serve the laddie she raised up to be the learned man he is, wi’ half the city running after him to save their lives and show them the way out o’ trouble. Nae, nae, it’s no the work I’m fretting after, it’s only the gude and proper face o’ things before the een o’ the world.”
The doctor looked up at her as if he could not understand a word.
“But you’ve always been called a remarkably good-looking woman, Joan, and I don’t see that you look a day older than you did the first time I saw you.”
“Whist, mon!” and Joan brushed the apron harder than ever, “wad ye drive the patience clear frae a body? Dinna ye ken that ilka time there’s a summons for your services, if it’s the richest mon in the town sending for you to come and bring him back from the grave, there’s naebody but an auld woman with her cap and spectacles to open the door for him? The cap may be as white as snaw, but it’s no the livery that’s becoming to a skelfu’ doctor’s house, and are whose name will soon be kenned far an’ wide among the wisest o’ ’em.”
“But what would you have me do, Joan? A young doctor may have all the wisdom of Solomon, but he’s got his way to make, and his porridge to earn, for all that, and he must wait awhile before he can afford to waste his fees on the vanities of life.”
“Waste! And wha kens better than yoursel’ that it would be neither waste nor vanity to ha’ things fitting and becoming and commanding the respect that’s due a high calling like your ain? And what great physician’s house did I ever see among my ain at home that had na his footman or two to open the door before ever a body had time to lay hold upon the handle o’ the bell?”
“Suppose I get one then?” asked the doctor, looking very gravely in her face.
“You’re no serious,” she said; “you’re no so easy to persuade, or to come round to the sound o’ reason a’ in the moment a body just sets it before your een.”
“No,” said the doctor, “I don’t suppose I am, but the truth is I’ve been thinking of the same thing myself. But you know,” and the doctor got up, laid down his book and shook himself, “you know, Joan, every ladder must have its lower rounds, and you must not expect all the glory of midday, when the sun is just getting above the horizon. Now suppose my new man should be rather small and rather young, so young in fact that it would be a good thing for him to go to school, out of office hours. That wouldn’t make any difference, I suppose, in the welcome you would give him, or the kindness you would show him when he came in your way?”
Joan looked doubtful.
“It’s no a’ the gither what I wad choose,” she said, “but half a bannock’s better than nae loaf at a’, and young folk grow, if you do but gie ’em time. But he suld be a braw laddie, weel favored and wi’ good back and legs.”
“Weel favored enough,” said the doctor laughing, “but as for the back and legs, they are good in their way; and getting better every day, but I fear we can’t make any more of them than the best a hunchback ever had.”
Joan’s face grew white. A hunchback opening the doctor’s door? She would open it herself if she were a hundred years old, sooner than that should happen!
“I’ll tell you about him,” went on the doctor, not seeming to notice her; and beginning as far back as the night in Ben’s room, he gave Joan a running sketch of the lame child as he had found him, of the dreary life, the great wistful eyes, the pain that was never tired, and the sensitive soul, shrinking away behind the “all but me” that had seemed always to rise like stony walls before it.
“Now a strong man with any soul in him can’t see a child in a prison like that, without wanting to knock the gates down for him, if he can,” went on the doctor, “and that’s what I’ve been trying to do the last six months, with the help of all hands out there; and I don’t think we’ve made a bad piece of work of it as far as we’ve gone. I’ve got the little fellow on his feet again, and he’s had more than one walk already, since the snow is passing off, and he’s beginning to believe all I’ve told him, or thinks he does, but it’s more like a story than anything else, so far, and I want to make it a reality. I want to get him away from that place out there, and get him in here where things are civilized, and put him, as soon as he gets a little more strength, into the best school there is, and let him measure himself with other boys of his age, and see what he can make of himself and the world he’s come into. And I don’t see any way to do this, but to indulge myself in an office-boy for certain hours of the day. The child must have a shelter, and some one to look to; and he’ll want more than I can be to him too. A friend something like yourself for instance, Joan;” and the doctor darted one of those quick looks and wonderful smiles at the housekeeper, that always made Creepy’s heart leap to his throat. Joan’s face ceased to be white long before the doctor had finished, and there was something the matter with her spectacles; she couldn’t see well through them, and there was a struggle going on behind them that was plain enough. It was a drawn battle for a few moments more, and Joan flourished the hearth-broom again, as if determined to knock over one side or the other with it, but at last she spoke.
“Puir bairnie,” she said, “it’s no mysel’ that wad we in the way o’ a work like what you hae been doin’, and if I have na the skill to help you in what you hae to do wi’ the puir crooked back, I can e’en comfort the lane heart a bit now and then, and help it take courage for the fight with the world, that is na sae bad after a’ as some folk would ca’ it, nor bad enough to think the worse o’ a young doctor that’s willing to shelter one o’ the Lord’s sorrowful bairns, when he might hae the finest pair o’ hands in the country to open the door for those that are looking for him.”
“Good for you, Joan,” said the doctor, smiling again, “and you needn’t fear any one is going to look as far as the limbs after they once get sight of the pair of eyes that shine out above them.”
“That’s all right,” he added to himself a moment later, as he shook the reins over the black horse’s head. “Creepy has Joan for his friend for ever; now for Mrs. Ganderby.”
CHAPTER IX.
Joan left the doctor’s office and retired to her own part of the house with mingled thoughts and sentiments. She had persuaded the doctor to grant her cherished wish: there was to be some one beside an old woman to open the door for his calls, and some one, if not in livery, at least in a tailor’s suit. But a crooked back! How was that ever going to look?
“Weel, weel, it were a deed o’ charity at the least, and like the doctor’s ain sel’ to see that sic a thing could be done at the same time he waur gratifying old Joan’s pride, and doing the worthy and respectable thing for himsel’. And who kenned but it might gie a bit o’ look o’ distinction to the house, after a’? And who could leave a bairn like that to greet his days awa’ alane and unpitied in what the doctor who kenned the truth o’ it a’ was pleased to call a prison. Not auld Joan. Nane suld ever say that.”
Her reflections were hardly ended, before the black horse had sped away over the distance from the office to the almshouse, and the doctor was at the door again. That had long ago ceased to surprise any one; the wonder to-day was that, instead of making his way at once to Creepy’s corner, he remained at least ten minutes closeted with Mrs. Ganderby, and when at last the door opened, he held it ajar long enough for Sue, just ready to dart away from the old clock, to hear her say,
“Well, well, sir, if you have such a thought in your heart, it’s not for me to do anything but rejoice that the Lord has shown such pity upon him, which at the same time, there’s no one in the house but will be sorry to miss the poor crooked thing, nor can do anything but wonder how you can find any way to manage things for a poor little ill-favored creature like him, much less to find him of any use to yourself; though after the change you’ve succeeded in making already, which it often seems to me you have done it more as the apostles used to cause the lame to walk than as a real living man of our day could be expected, no one can feel inclined to doubt or to wonder at anything you undertake.”
In another moment Sue had fled away just in time, and was calling upon Enoch and all the rest to help her imagine what this mysterious speech could mean, and amid all this excitement the doctor was at Creepy’s side again, and darting one of the old quick inquiring looks into his face. But it was a joyous look too, and Creepy responded with a smile; he had learned to do that long ago, but ever since the morning the doctor had talked to him about the Brotherhood, the blood had seemed to flow with a fuller throb through his veins, and he could raise his head and meet the look of any one with what it seemed to him must be the same feeling that was making the earth blossom out into spring, green grass and flowers once more.
“So, so, my little man! All bright and well this morning, and troubles vanishing away like the last rags and tatters of winter that have been hiding in the corners of the field? Well, that is as it should be; and now, if you haven’t been taking a walk with Enoch and tiring yourself out already, suppose you should get into that chaise of mine, and see how life seems to me, driving about in it all day. I can’t let you learn what exercise is all at once, and I want to get you into drill for that fishing excursion of ours; it will be time for it now before we can say Jack Robinson.”
Six months ago this would have made Creepy’s heart stand still, and then beat with such a great, trembling pulse that he could hardly have breathed, but now he only got up from his chair with a glow in his cheeks and a great shining in his eyes, and said he was ready.
“Good! And suppose, if you shouldn’t be tired of everything before we get there, suppose we should stop at my house a while, and see if you can find anything to amuse yourself with? And if you should, and if I should be busy, as I am very likely to be, suppose we should not come back at all to-day; or if we didn’t feel in the mood of it, not even to-morrow, and give you a chance to see if you like life anywhere else as well as here?”
The black horse seemed to understand that something to deal tenderly with was being lifted into the chaise. He stopped pawing the ground as he always did when he heard the doctor’s step, and instead of dashing off at the first touch of a loot upon the chaise floor, he stood as if such a thing as moving had never been heard of, and only looked over his shoulder with wondering eyes as the doctor placed Creepy exactly where he wanted him among the cushions, and tucked the lap-robe carefully round on that side. But it was only a moment; they were all right then and off, but there was a touch on the rein that told him very plainly they were not going as fast as usual, and that every roughness in the road was to be left one side, or, if that couldn’t be, smoothed over by the best motion possible.
“Driving isn’t quite what it might be, yet,” said the doctor; “but things are getting better every day, and by the end of another week we may see the dust flying, after all. Do you see that bit of green grass showing itself over there? We had better feast our eyes while we can, for we shall be coming to city pavements before we know it.”
But he seemed to be in no hurry to come to them, or indeed to come to anything or any place in particular. They took the first turn in the road, it is true, the same that Creepy used to wonder at in days gone by, and which Enoch had showed him, in the queer chair, so many times since; but instead of keeping on after that towards the city, they swept off into another, and then leisurely on till they came to what seemed hardly more than a lane, overhung by sweeping branches of great old trees.
“There,” said the doctor, “that is the way we shall take when we bring our fishing rods along with us. Do you see those willows down there, yellow as gold, and buds swelling on every twig. When they have fairly burst forth, and made green leaves of themselves, that will be the time for us to come. But this morning I don’t know that we can do better than drive a little farther.”
Creepy did not answer a word, but that was of no consequence with the doctor; he always understood him just as well when he could not speak. Was this the world that he had dreamed of so long? Was this what life had always been to other people, “all but him,” this thrill that was filling every vein, this joy at his heart, this free fresh air, this sunlight, this feeling that there was something more, still lying beyond every turn? He leaned back among the cushions and drew long deep breaths, as if in that way he could drink more deeply, and make something more his own.
The doctor chatted on, they took one turn after another, until at last there were no more to take, and they were coming fairly into the city. And now the doctor watched his patient more carefully; he saw that the great blue veins were swelling up in his forehead as he had not seen them now for a long time. The palaces and castles, as they seemed to Creepy’s eyes, the countless, wonderful throngs of people, the hurry and bustle and bewildering noise, were going to be too much for him; they must take the shortest cut home.
That brought them past the little cottage between its two brick guardians, and Creepy caught sight of the conservatory window. In an instant he had started up with a sudden cry, his cheeks turned pale and then crimson, and he leaned past the side of the chaise until, for a second, the doctor thought he had lost him.
“Wait a bit, my man,” he said, laughing, as he caught Creepy’s arm; “they’re worth looking at, that is true enough; but I can’t quite consent that you should break your neck for the sake of a peep at them. Sit up now, like a sensible fellow, till I can roll up the curtain and then we will walk past once or twice and see what we can make of it all.”
The curtain was rolled up, and the black horse brought to a walk and then turned to pass the window again. This time Creepy’s heart did stand still! Geraniums, azaleas, roses, heliotropes, and jessamines; and almost loveliest of all, some one standing behind the flowers, her face as fair as any of them, and her golden hair bound back from her forehead like rippling sunlight.
She had caught sight of Creepy too, Nellie Halliday, and though she could not read the whole story on the quivering face and great shining eyes, her quick glance told her enough, and when the horse had been turned again and was passing once more for Creepy’s last look, she had broken off a handful of the rarest flowers, thrown up one of the sashes a little way, and stood holding them toward him with a smile.
Creepy turned one entreating look toward the doctor, and then felt the reins put into his hand; the doctor had sprung down and was taking them from her.
“Excuse me,” she was saying, “I thought the little fellow was an invalid, and that perhaps they might be a pleasure to him, but I’m afraid I am venturing too much,” and a blush like one of her own roses spread over her face as the doctor took them from her hand.
“Quite the contrary,” said the doctor; “my little patient is indebted to you for his first taste of one of God’s rarest gifts;” and with his hat still in his hand he was in the chaise again, and the flowers in Creepy’s grasp.
“Well, and what do you think of them?” he asked gently, after a few moments as Creepy still held them reverently, scarcely pressing his white fingers upon their stems, and turning them from side to side before his enraptured eyes.
He turned and looked in the doctor’s face. “I think,” he said, “the King must have made them for his princess.”
“Good!” said the doctor, “that’s it exactly—or for a princess now and then. At least I believe that was one who stood holding these out to you.”
But there was no time to talk about the flowers, they had stopped before the doctor’s door. Could Creepy bear anything more?
With a word to the black horse, the doctor had lifted him gently from the chaise, and they were going up the steps together. And this was where the doctor lived! This had been one of the dreams over which Creepy’s thoughts had run a thousand times, trying to imagine where it could be, and what it could be like. And here it was, an everyday sort of place enough to city eyes, too closely between others for any thought of conservatory windows, a brown-stone front, and an iron railing up the steps; but grandeur itself to Creepy’s eyes. And now they were in the office. Books, books on every hand, and marvellous, mysterious glittering things that he could not divine the use of; an arm-chair or two, a lounge, and an ivy trailing over the window. But the doctor gave him very little time to go from one to the other.
“Now, my man, or my prince,” he said, with one of his old smiles, “I want you to remember that even you might possibly, under some circumstances, get tired, and I’m afraid your physician may not be pleased if it goes too far; you have done a good deal for one step out into life, and I have some writing that hasn’t been done. Suppose I just make you all right on that lounge a while, and you keep quiet there half an hour or so, while I do a little work by myself. There—I think that’s about right; now if you should by any accident fall asleep a few moments, there would be no harm done.”
The doctor settled himself to his writing, and appeared to have forgotten there was such a thing in existence as the throbbing little life that lay upon his sofa; but he did not forget it, not for an instant, and stole a look once in a while to see how things were going. He was afraid there had been a little too much; he had planned all he thought would do very well before the matter of the flowers came up. But he was soon relieved by seeing the great eyelids droop, then rest quietly, and in a few moments more he was sure his patient was asleep.
“That’s good,” he said as he took one more look to make sure he was not mistaken; “only a child could do that, and I’m glad to see he has even so much of it in him. Perhaps he’ll grow young enough to make up for lost time, after all.”
When Creepy opened his eyes, everything was as he had left it; the doctor still sat at his table, not an article in the room had moved from its place, not a wonder had lessened, not a vision had vanished away. He wasn’t even sure he had been asleep, and the doctor said nothing about it as he laid down his pen and turned to look at him.
“There, that’s done,” he said, “and now, I suppose, I ought to go out. Do you feel rested enough to amuse yourself for a while? I think I’ll call old Joan to help you for this time. You must make friends with Joan, for you wouldn’t have had much of a doctor if it hadn’t been for her. I was smaller than you, and not a bit stronger, when she undertook to make something of me.”
He rang the bell, and the gaunt form, cap, and spectacles appeared.
“Joan, this is the little man I was speaking to you of; he is going to stay with me to-day, perhaps to-morrow, perhaps longer, if we can make him like it. Can’t you find something to entertain him with while I make a few calls?”
Joan’s face was a study as she looked at the tiny, crooked form, the pale face, and the great dark eyes that still lay on the corner of the lounge. First, amazement, then perplexity and the tender pity and readiness to help that are somewhere in every woman’s heart, no matter how sharp the outlines of her shoulders; and in none more warmly than in the old Scotch nurse’s, doubtful as she had looked for a moment.
“Indeed, mon,” she said, “it’s nae sae muckle auld Joan remembers o’ the tricks that used to amuse yoursel’ in days gone by; not that the time’s sae very lang past, either, but it’s brought its changes wi’ it, and I’ve ta’en my share o’ them, I suppose. But I’ll do what’s in my power for ony visitor o’ yours gladly enough, and more than a’ for a tired little heart sic as this seems to be.”
“Well, well,” said the doctor, “I’ll venture it. Tell him some of the marvellous stories I used to hear, or take him in your own part of the house, if he likes, and let him see how we manage to live here all by ourselves. Good-by, my little man; I’ll see you again before you’re half done with Joan,” and he was gone.
It seemed a long time, and yet a short one, before the black horse’s hoofs were heard clattering up to the pavement again. It took all Creepy’s quick wits to follow Joan in her strange talk and make head or tail of what she was saying, and she found something quite as new to herself in the gentle, patient soul, the twisted form, and the “unco sorrowfu’” look that met her out of the brown eyes.
But they both kept their difficulties to themselves, and got bravely along with them; and, best of all to Creepy, Joan was never tired of talking of the doctor.
“It’ll take a lang day and a lang search,” she said, “to find anither man of nae mair years than his that can measure off against his little finger in all that suld mak the warld the better or the happier for his living in it. There’s mair wisdom in his head than in a hundred that think themselves equal wi’ him; an’ sic a braw an’ winsome laddie as he waur, an’ sae strang an’ gladsome, never dree or wearied, an’ I never kenned him afraid to raise his head amang the proudest, nor feel that he couldna fash himsel’ to lift up the weakest and the humblest o’ them a’. Ye canna see it a’ yet, but maybe ye hae kenned him lang enough to get a glimmer o’ the truth. Dinne ye think sae, bairnie?”
“I think,” said Creepy, slowly rising up from where he lay, and fixing the great brown eyes on Joan’s face, “I think the weak and the sick must come to him as they came to the Lord Christ when he was here. Don’t you think He has taught him to be like Himself?”
From that moment Joan would have fought with wild beasts, if it had been necessary, to protect and cherish her new charge.
CHAPTER X.
A week later Creepy was as quietly domesticated in the doctor’s house as if he had been left among the inside finishings by the builder; and instead of the shrinking from everybody and everything that would once have made it impossible to him, the warm glow in his veins, that he had thought must be like spring to the earth, kept on, as warm and as life-giving as ever; his own old “All but me” seemed to have fled away, and the doctor’s “Why not you?” to have made some little hold for itself at last.
And there was still one more change that covered up, if it did not eclipse, all others: a new suit from the tailor’s, which, though not “worried out” by Mrs. Ganderby’s “wits and patience,” smoothed away so much from the queer figure, and showed to so much advantage the delicacy of face and form there really was, that Joan was actually proud to have them appear at the front door.
But the books were the great thing, after all. A whole new set, and the doctor to hear his lessons, though the doctor did not think as much of that as Creepy did.
“Well enough for a while,” he said to himself, “till I can bring him up to the mark, but I don’t want him moping at home with an old fellow like me; I want to get him into that schoolhouse over yonder, and let him get his blood stirred among boys like himself.”
“Like himself!” he repeated, with a smile; “well, no, not exactly that, that’s a fact. They’ve got better backs than he has, but he’s got a head that will beat any half dozen of them together, if they don’t look sharp. If I saw other people putting a boy of his health over the ground he’s making, in the same time, I should say they were a set of fools, but it seems nothing more than play to him. I believe I could get him admitted there in another six weeks, and he’ll make a steady run through, if I can only keep up his health, and then—”
The doctor glanced with a look quite like fatherly pride at Creepy, where he sat with his hair pushed back from his forehead, his slender fingers buried in the pages of his book, and the brown eyes devouring what lay before them.
“And then,” he went on, “I don’t know about trusting him at college. I’m not sure he’ll have strength for that; but we’ll make a doctor of him yet, and one that knows what he’s about too, if I’m not very much mistaken.”
And so the time slipped away; long, velvety grass made one forget the snow had ever lain in the fields, the willow-buds had burst and were swinging like long, gray plumes over the brook, and Creepy and the doctor had been trouting along its shore. That was a day that bewildered him as much as the sight of Nelly Halliday’s flowers, but the doctor was not afraid this time; the cool, fresh air and the quiet rests under the old trees with the picnic-baskets were a balance on the other side, and Creepy’s quiet laughs breaking out now and then told that everything was going right.
“So,” said the doctor that evening, as Creepy lay curled up in the sofa-corner for a rest, “do you remember the two things we talked about under the old butternut-tree? Fishing and going to school, weren’t they? Well, now we’ve tried one of them and like it pretty well, hadn’t we better be getting ready for the other?”
Creepy only laughed and drew himself up with a look that rewarded the doctor for all the pains he had taken. It was the “Why not you?” smiling quietly out of his eyes, for after he had really gone fishing with the doctor, what else might not come to pass?
But not quite yet. Creepy must get used to as much of the new wine of life as he was tasting now before the doctor could venture on filling any nearer to the brim; and moreover he was afraid the “Why not you?” was still a pretty feeble little thing. If anything should happen to crush it down and break it off to the roots, he did not know as he should ever be able to raise it again. He was very much afraid the “All but me” would start up once more and choke it out for ever.
So Creepy went on with his lessons, and understood Joan better every day, and drove about behind the black horse until the palaces and castles began to look more like houses for real men and women. But best of all was a walk now and then quite by himself past Nelly Halliday’s window, and more than once he had come home with just such a handful of treasures as had set him beside himself the first day he came into the city.
But if Creepy was getting used to the affair of the flowers, and began to take it quietly, so that it didn’t set him in a toss any more, the doctor didn’t seem to be.
“Pshaw!” he said to himself as he saw them, “that’s the privilege a child has without asking for it! I’d give a month of my life to see a face like that again, and I don’t dare even to steal a look through the side of my chaise as I drive by, while he can walk up to the very window-pane and wait till it opens to him.”
But he only asked quietly, “Who gave them to you, my little man?”
“The princess,” said Creepy, seriously enough.
The doctor laughed, and said, “Good,” again, but the second time Creepy had a different answer.
“The princess cut them for me, but some one else who was with her jumped through the window and brought them to me. He was handsome, too,” and then the doctor had two to envy, instead of one.
He would not have disturbed himself much about it, though, if he had seen that it was only Aleck, and had heard him at that very moment telling Nelly, with great fun in his eyes, that it was all very fine for him to play humble servant and dispense her favors, until some older pair of beseeching eyes than their new visitor’s should stand pleading before the door.
But Nelly’s sweet thoughts were wandering off after Creepy, and she would have envied the doctor to his heart’s content had she known that he had the happiness of doing every day and all day long what had only fallen in her way two or three times, and might never come again.
“I wish we knew where the little fellow lives, Aleck, and whom he belongs to. Somebody is kind to him, I know; but it seems strange they don’t provide him with a few flowers of his own, he seems so ravenous for them. I’m almost glad they don’t, though, it is so delightful to have him coming here now and then.”
The doctor thought it strange, too, and was just then berating himself for a stupid fellow, that it had never occurred to him how they would have brightened up the almshouse the last winter. However, he couldn’t be altogether sorry, and if things had come round so that Miss Halliday’s flowers were straying into the office, and bringing in a light and a fragrance such as the dull, old room had never known before, it was too pleasant to quarrel with altogether.
“An’ what’s the doctor been making up his mind to, now, I wonder?” said old Joan to herself as she lingered about with her dusting one morning. “Something, I ken well eneugh by the glint in his een and the close-pulled line about his lips. Something is sure to happen when his face sets itsel’ that fashion;” and she was right.
“Joan,” he said, “the boy is ready to go to school. It is high time; it’s altogether too dull music shut up here with only an old woman and a young doctor to speak to from one day to another. The last term of the year is half out, it is true, but he had better go the half and make a few acquaintances to amuse himself with through the long vacation, and then he’ll be ready to start fair and square when the next year begins.”
“Hoot, mon,” she said, “canna ye see that the wee bairnie is doing weel enough whaur he bides, that ye maun tak him and turn him loose amang a parcel o’ boys that’s mair like wild animals than anything fit to be trusted wi’ a tender flower ye hae but just now taught to haud up its head a bit at the best? Only let ane o’ them trample down your wark wi’ a rough-shod foot, an’ whaur would it be then?”
“That would be an ugly piece of work,” said the doctor; “but boys are not so bad as you think, and a wild animal would be a mild term for one that wouldn’t lend a helping hand when a little fellow like Creepy came in his way. And that’s the very thing I want; there are some things you and I can’t do for him, let our will be ever so good.”
“Weel, weel,” said Joan, “its no becoming for me to be disputing wi’ a doctor about his patient; but if any harm comes, it may need doctor and nurse baith to bring things right again.”
“We wont look for anything of that kind,” said the doctor; “and as for ‘bringing things right,’ I don’t see that much help is needed from anybody just now. Did you ever think the boy would stand as straight, or walk as fast, as you see him to-day? It’s about time to say Good-by to that name of his, I think, though I don’t know exactly where to look for another.”
“And what need hae ye o’ anither, if anither means aught different frae your ain?” said Joan. “Havena ye as fair a name as the world turns its ear to, and dinna ye intend keeping the bairn near eneugh yoursel’ to let him hae a share in it? What harm wad come to ony o’ us if folk should learn to ca’ him Thorndyke?”
“None in the world,” said the doctor, laughing, “and if you and he are agreed, we’ll call it settled.”
CHAPTER XI.
The hurrying, scurrying, scrambling stream of boys was once more leaping and pushing, running and walking up the schoolhouse-stairs, where Tom had waited so long in vain hope that Hal would “move on.” There were not so very many of them, not more than thirty-five or forty at the most; but there was something in the way they were getting up stairs that would have made any one who wasn’t used to it sure there were legs and boots enough for fifty or a hundred. They subsided considerably at the schoolroom-door, though not altogether, as the bell had not yet rung, but one by one, as they passed in, they seemed struck into dumb astonishment at what they saw. It was only Creepy standing by his desk while the professor looked over his books, and talked pleasantly of the place he had better take in the classes. But the queer, twisted little form, the great head with its high, white forehead and brilliant eyes, and the color coming and going like a living thing in the pale cheeks, seemed to put a spell on the boys, and held their eyes as if they had seen a hobgoblin, until the professor turned his own upon them with such a flash and frown as sent them off to their seats and their own affairs in a twinkling. But Creepy hardly heard what the professor was saying; the rush had taken his breath away, and though he had not dared look up as it came, he felt every step that passed near him, and his heart was throbbing again as it had not since the day when he crept out to his little room after the first visit from the doctor.
And it would not be quiet after the bell had rung, and every one was so busy that he had ventured as many glances as he liked about the room. Was this school? Were these the boys he was to know and call his schoolmates and companions? But so many! Such a great crowd! He had not thought so many boys ever got together in one school; he had hardly thought there were as many in the city! How should he ever come to know one from the other? how would he ever dare to speak to any of them? Oh, why did he come away from the doctor and Joan? He felt happy, and remembered that he was one of the princes when he was with them; and the professor, too, he did not mind; the doctor and he had had such a pleasant talk when the doctor came to introduce him, and he had said so many kind things already. No, he should never be afraid of him, but there were too many of these boys, and still more in the next room.
His head felt dizzy and he laid it down upon his desk, and listened to the hum a while with his eyes shut. How was he ever going to study in the midst of it?
But somehow, after the first half hour, it did not seem quite so much, and by the time the bell struck ten o’clock, Creepy was going on with his lessons with a steadier pulse and almost a feeling of pleasure warming up in his heart again. What if he were to like it, after all! What if some of the boys were even to like him, and they should come to be friends, as the doctor wished! At any rate, he should see their games at recess! The doctor had told him about them, and given him a great many directions not to run too much until he got a little used to it; he couldn’t understand very well yet, but it would all come right if he once saw.
Hum, hum, went the schoolroom, and on went the routine of lessons. If any of the other boys had been told the new-comer thought it exciting, they would have called it about the strangest thing they ever heard of. Carter and Davis were busy at that very moment in the next room over an illustrated almanac they had been getting up, to show how many days and hours still remained before it would all be over, and the long vacation come on. How many hours said almanac had taken from their studies, and how much care had been necessary to conceal it from proper authorities, were questions they did not vex their souls about; it was trouble enough to Davis to furnish the plan, the leading ideas, and the plain work, while Carter designed the illustrations, and a pretty good thing they had made of it altogether, they thought.
It lay open now on Carters desk, just inside his astronomy, and he made a sign to Davis to look at the last and crowning design just completed.
Davis signalled “Tip-top” with telegraphic taps of his pencil upon his slate, and then the astronomy-class was called.
The boys filed past the open door that led from the small room into the one where Creepy sat, with a quiet, regular step until Aleck reached it, and his eyes wandering through, caught sight of the face that had looked in at the conservatory-window with such rapture two or three times, but had been missing now so long that he and Nelly had feared they should never meet it again. Without knowing he did it, he came to such a sudden halt that Carter, who was behind him, was “brought up all standing,” his astronomy knocked from his hand, and the almanac went skimming away until at last it fluttered down directly before the professor’s feet.
“Thank you,” said the professor, with a nod and a bow to Carter; “yes, I will look at it with pleasure,” and picking it up he turned leaf after leaf, and studied one after another of the chefs-d’œuvres.
“Ah,” he said, after what seemed to the two boys an eternity of suspense, “I really was not aware I had such an artist in the school. Modesty is a virtue, and shrinks from having its work exhibited, but such masterpieces as these I must beg to hold up for one moment to the admiration of the class,” and mounting the platform he took his seat at the desk, and holding up the almanac to the view of the whole room, he turned the pages and exhibited one after another of the grand designs for the five weeks remaining, in every one of which a caricature of himself formed a prominent figure.
A suppressed murmur arose as the pictures met the devouring eyes of the boys, beginning with a bonfire of compositions at which the professor was trying to warm his icy heart, and ending with the Fourth of July in the shape of a spread eagle with wings of stars and stripes, the school bell in one talon and the blackboard brush in the other, flying away with the professor bodily, while a pile of books like a small haystack was heaped upon its back, geographies, Virgils, philosophies and grammars, helter-skelter, and hanging together no one could tell how.
Carter looked as if he would sink, or at least as if he would give all he expected to die possessed of, if a knot-hole would open and let him escape, but Davis made a tremendous effort and kept so unmoved a face that no one suspected him of having anything to do with the affair.
“Allow me to congratulate you,” said the professor, as he returned the almanac, “not only is such talent worthy of commendation, but the faithful use of time, and the expenditure of precious moments upon work of genuine importance, will if formed into a habit, become of life-long value, and I must congratulate myself that accident has brought the indication of such promise to my notice;” and with another bow he placed the fated subject of discussion in Carter’s hands, which would far sooner have reached themselves out for a flogging than to acknowledge such an ownership.
The lesson went on, but a more vivid picture filled Aleck’s mind than any Carter’s pencil could produce. That face at the desk in the other room! Their eyes had met, and Creepy had recognized him at the same instant and with a great bound of joy, and was over his book now without seeing a word, with no room for anything but the thought that he was here; and Aleck himself had to take good care that he did not stumble in his recitation, he was so busy thinking what Nelly would say when he told her whom he had found, and how she would delight to surprise him with a handful of flowers on his desk now and then.
But the recitation was over at last and with it the first division of the morning session; the bell rang for recess and the stream poured out once more, though soberly as a funeral procession compared with the way it had passed in a few hours before.
This was what Creepy had been longing for, and yet when the moment fairly came, it seemed to him he could not stir. If he could only see that face that had looked in at the door! But he saw only one strange one after another, and each glancing curiously at him as it passed.
But the professor caught sight of him just then and divined the difficulty.
“Don’t you feel like going out? I think I would try if I were you,” he said with the same smile that had been so reassuring in the morning. “Here, Haggarty,” he added to Tom, who had hung behind as usual, to keep clear of something he knew Hal had on his tongue’s end, “take this boy along with you, can’t you, and see that he makes a good time out of it somehow. It don’t do to sit here too long without a breath of air.”
They went down stairs together, and though Creepy thought Tom seemed to be casting sidelong glances at him, it never occurred to him that he saw anything peculiar beyond his being a stranger, and the shouts coming up from the playground had such a tempting sound, that he hurried over the stairs in a way that astonished Tom beyond measure.
“This is the way,” said Tom, pushing open the door, and leading Creepy out, with a feeling that he would do anything in the world if he only knew what was the right thing, but that he really didn’t, he took refuge in a corner close at hand, and a little off the common track of the players.
“Hurrah for Carter and his almanac!” was the shout just now coming up, “Carter’s almanac, the newest thing out!”
“I say, old fellow, is it time to look out for storms?” cried Hal Fenimore’s voice.
“And I say, what quarter of the moon is best for sowing winter wheat?” said another.
“You don’t give away those almanacs, do you?” cried a third; “if you do I want the first chance.”
“Come, come,” said Aleck, who had been distressed enough at being the unlucky cause of all the trouble, “what’s the use of harping for ever on one string. Let’s have a game of ball, or time will be up before we know it.”
The mousers scattered again, and drew off for their game, while another set were establishing bounds for a run of tag. All this had been Greek to Creepy; he hadn’t understood a word, but it would all come to him in time, he supposed, if he could ever get through this business of being acquainted. Aleck had watched for him when the stream first poured out, but had given him up before now, and moved off, and poor little Tom, feeling more and more awkward every moment, made a great effort at last to say, “They’re going to have a game; don’t you want to come?”
Creepy hesitated a moment, trying to find voice.
“What a plague! He isn’t going to answer at all,” thought Tom, and in a fit of desperation, dreading above all lest Hal should get a sight of the situation, plunged his hands into his pockets, and walked away to join the players. A sudden thought sent Aleck back into the school-room, and Creepy, who had caught one glimpse of him, felt his last hope depart.
“However nobody seems to be taking any notice,” he thought, “and I can look on, at any rate, I suppose, of course.”
So this was a real game of ball, that he had so longed to see ever since the doctor first described it to him! He couldn’t understand it yet, any better than the talk about the almanac, but the shouts and the quick runs and the eager contest took hold of him in a moment, and he forgot himself and his embarrassment together.
“Oh what sport that must be,” he thought, as the game went on; “and how strong they are, and how swift, and what throws they make! I wonder if I shall ever learn? Of course I shall, the doctor said I should;” and his cheek warmed again, not as it had when the boys rushed into the school-room, but with as spirited a glow as the swiftest runner felt in his.
“Hurrah!” shouted the chorus, at an extra toss, and “hurrah,” echoed Creepy, silently to be sure, but with none the less gusto for all that.
“Oh how I should like to try! I wonder when they’ll ask me;” and suddenly the thought that no one noticed him, which had been such a refuge at first, rushed on him with a very disagreeable suggestion and brought the old “all but me” nearer to his lips than it had been for months. But just then he saw that they were noticing him; the game was halting and more than one group were putting their heads together and glancing towards his corner with whispers that must have something to do with him.
“You ought to ask him to play,” said Tom, whose feeling of responsibility in the matter had made him decidedly uncomfortable all the time—only, as he had declared at first, he really didn’t know what to do.
“Humph,” said Carter, who, still smarting under his own humiliation, felt that it would be a relief to put somebody else in his place, “ask him to play! A bright idea that would be. What’s a fellow like him going to do?”
The words floated over to Creepy’s ears, though they were not really intended to do so, and sent the blood tingling to his fingers’ ends, and the thought of the doctor seemed as far off as if a whole world lay between them.
The boys laughed and the game began again, but a feeling like ice was gathering around Creepy’s heart. He was not to play! They would not ask him! “Why not you?” Perhaps he did not hear, perhaps he had made a mistake. Oh, where was the doctor? Why had he ever come here at all?
“I say, you ought to do it,” began Tom again, uneasily; “the professor said he was to have a good time out of it somehow.”
“Suppose you mind your own business,” said Carter; but it seemed to Davis, who felt himself “just on the brink” with the professor about the almanac, that he might lay an anchor to windward, and he made his way across to where Creepy stood.
“Hallo, can you pitch a ball?” he asked.
“I don’t know, I never tried,” said Creepy, forcing the words from between his lips.
“Well, take this,” said Davis, falling back a little, “and stand about where you are, and let me have it the best you know how.”
Creepy took the ball and threw it with a trembling hand; it struck the ground some distance from Davis’ feet.
“Ha, ha,” shouted Carter, “how’s that for high?”
“How is that for Humpy?” answered Hal Fenimore, in a rather low tone, but heard well enough for all that.