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.”