“The dog will be cooler out here, and we can bring it in at nightfall. I’ve got some work to do down beyond now, and can’t be bothered.”
It was characteristic of Doss Umpey that he had always work to do down beyond whenever Nell wanted any assistance from him, so she made up her mind that when he was safely out of the way she would manage somehow to get poor Pip into more comfortable quarters.
Despite the work he had spoken of, the old man seemed in no hurry to go, but stood leaning at ease against the bole of a great redwood tree, talking in the dreamy fashion which always seemed to suit him much better than hard work.
He was not a really old man, being only about sixty-five, strong and hearty, but with a constitutional aversion to sustained effort of any sort.
“There’s no mistake but you are right-down handy at tending critters that are ill. A first-class nurse you’d make, Nell, if only you’d got the chance,” he said, watching her active ministrations to the dog with lazy admiration.
“Why don’t you give me the chance, then?” she retorted quickly. “I’d love to be a nurse, or to be anything that would help me to get on. Just look at me, granfer. I’m seventeen to-day, and I’m just good for nothing. I can’t even keep house properly, because I ain’t got the things to do it with.”
“I’m a poor man, or maybe I’d have done a better part by you; though, as folks are always telling me, it isn’t every lone man like me that would have been bothered with bringing up a child as didn’t really belong to him,” Doss Umpey said, puffing out his chest with an air of satisfaction. He always prided himself a great deal on this, the one charitable act of his life, but it is open to doubt whether Nell would not have been better off if she had been left to the tender mercies of some orphan asylum when her father died, than she was in the care of a grandfather who troubled himself so little about her interests.
“If only I’d crossed the border and settled in Canada when I was a young man, it would have been a deal better for me all round,” he said, leaning his head back against the redwood and gazing pensively up into the sky.
“Why didn’t you?” demanded Nell, as she gently bathed Pip’s torn ear in cool water.
“Circumstances were against me. Most things have been against me somehow,” he said, with a reflective sigh.