“Could you mind little Totty?” I says to Dick, for I didn’t like to take the child out in the wet.
He didn’t speak, but made a place aside him for the little thing, and the next minute the poor little mite had nestled up close to him, and I turned to put on my shawl, when who should lift up the canvas and come in but Balchin, with a steaming hot glass of whisky and water in his hand?
“Here we are, my boy,” he says, in his rough cheery way, that he could put on when he liked. “Now is the sun of summer turned to glorious winter, so away with discontent and a merry Christmas and a happy noo year to you, my boy. You’re a bit outer sorts you are, and so was I just now, but I’m what you’re going to be directly, so tip some of this up.”
But Dick only shook his head and smiled, and then whispering him to please stop till I got back, I slipped out to fetch the doctor.
It isn’t hard to find the doctor’s place in a town, and I was soon there standing, ring, ring, ring, while the rain, now half sleet and snow, began to come down so, that I shivered again. But I hardly thought about it, for my mind was all upon poor Dick, for a terrible thought had come into my head, and that was, that my poor boy was going to leave me. Everything now seemed to tell me of it: the cold howling wind seemed to shriek as it tore away through the long street, the clock at the big church seemed to be tolling instead of striking twelve, while the very air seemed alive with terrible whispers of something dreadful going to happen.
At last a window upstairs was opened, and I asked if the doctor was at home.
“Who wants him?” said a voice.
“I want him to come to my poor husband, for he’s—” I couldn’t finish the word for a sob that seemed to choke me.
“Where do you live?” said the same voice.
“At the show in the market-place,” I said, feeling all the while half ashamed.