“Yes; I guess that’s enough unless you have perfect stacks of money. I want them all to go to school. School’s so lovely. I’d have liked awfully to go more, but there was always somebody to see to.”
Dr. Fullerton gave her arm an affectionate little squeeze.
“You know more than any of the rest of us as it is, Peg. Schooling you would have been ‘gilding refined gold and painting the lily.’ I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll undertake to see all eight of those children through whooping cough and measles and any blamed thing they choose to have and I won’t charge you a cent for it.”
Pegeen looked immeasurably relieved.
“That’ll be perfectly splendid,” she said happily. “Doctor’s bills do make lots of trouble.”
“They trouble the doctors.”
Dr. Fullerton grinned ruefully as he admitted it. A very large percentage of his patients showed absolutely no interest in his bills when he sent them.
Archibald and Wiggles were waiting for Pegeen at the meadow bars and each welcomed her after his own fashion. Wiggles was the more exuberant of the two. Only by sheer force was he kept from meeting a sudden and violent death in his wild effort to climb into the car before it stopped; and when the small girl finally stood by the roadside, he gave an exhibition of hysterical affection ill befitting one of his stern sex. Archibald merely took his pipe from his mouth and came forward to lift Peg from the car, with a quiet, “Well, here you are, Nurse O’Neill,” but the satisfaction in his face was good to see, and Dr. Fullerton chuckled over it as he went spinning on down the Valley.
“That youngster has lit on her feet,” he told himself contentedly. “Hanging over those bars watching for her, for an hour, I’ll bet. Wonder how much money the man has anyway.”
Meanwhile the three he had left behind on the roadside were going happily up the meadow slope to the shack. Archibald and Peg went hand in hand and, as usual, she accommodated her pace to his long easy stride by a system of two steps and a skip, while Wiggles gyrated excitedly about the two, yelping his joy.