CHAPTER IV
"I must look after that family," mused the doctor. "Bless the young things! a frolicsome kitten and a little earnest child, full of faith and love of human kind, can be wonderful factors in the matter of happiness. Strange how I have gone along missing both and not knowing what I missed. Let me see. I'll send Hooper to look after grandfather's 'bronicles;' he smiled broadly at the remembrance of the garbled word. I'd rather not have the little one know that I've a hand in it, and 'twill be good for Hooper to try his hand at that sort of thing. Let me see if that youngster's letter reached its proper destination." He stopped and pulled out the packet he carried.
Yes, there it was, signed "Bill." The doctor stood and read the poor smudgy, mis-spelled little missive over, put it back in his pocket, and walked thoughtfully on, not knowing that at that very moment he was passing the writer, who, with his meagre supply of wan-looking violets, was offering them for sale.
Bill as little knew that the letter over which he had spent much thought and hard labor was resting in the doctor's pocket, for he imagined it to be in the hands of a red-nosed, white-haired individual, with a jolly countenance and a twinkling eye—such a one as could be seen, more or less realistically represented in shop windows. A very different looking person, indeed, from this portly, prosperous-appearing man with the keen eyes, who wore "swagger clothes, and didn't care nothin' fer poor cusses, or he'd 'a bought somethin' from a feller." Bill's ire was roused by this kind of person, so indifferent and absent-minded, as never even to glance at the violets, nor give a regretful negative, as some nice ladies did.
"Talk about old Santa Claus," muttered Bill, "if he is anybody at all, he ain't friends to nobody but rich folks; that's what I say. I ain't never heard from him, an' I guess I ain't never goin' to, what's more."
But, as if to chide his lack of faith, Elinor herself appeared like a reproving angel at his side. "Bill," she said, standing on tip-toe that she might see the box-cover in which the violets lay, "Bill, have you sold lots to-day?"
"No, I ain't," he answered, rather crossly.