"I never heard the boy speak so much before."
"Nor I, sir."
"And he can say Frank and Fred now, I perceive."
"Oh yes, sir; only if he is in a hurry, he slips back into the old way. Well, Dr. Wentworth, I'm easy in my mind about the boy now."
"You may be, Betty. As far as I can, I will make him my care. He is a fine fellow."
So, when the midsummer holidays began, Fred left school and began his new work. The doctor began to teach him enough Latin to read the prescriptions, or at least that was what he first intended, but the boy was so eager to learn that the lessons did not stop there, nor was Latin the only thing studied. Study was a delight to the silent, somewhat lonely boy, and he made such progress that the good doctor was proud of his pupil.
And the cross was placed at the head of Frank's grave, but the doctor persuaded Fred to allow him to give Frank's message in a slightly different form. Thus—"His last words were a message to his mother, to tell her that he had taken care of Fred."
For a little more than a year, this arrangement continued to work very well. Fred became very useful to the doctor, and Betty had no reason to feel neglected. Then the dear old woman began to fail more and more rapidly, and Fred spent the greater part of his time with her, but it was with the doctor's full consent.
One evening—it was now September, and Dr. Wentworth had told Fred that old Betty could not last much longer—the boy was sitting beside the bed on which she lay; not suffering, only, as she said herself, "dying, and very slow about it." They had both been silent for some time, and when she said suddenly, "Is there any one here but us two, Fred?" poor Fred started, for his thoughts were far away.
"No, Betty. Mrs. Summers—" Betty's eldest daughter—"has gone home to see after the children, and John and his wife are coming presently to stay all night with you."