With him, as with the doctor, Barclay was an especial favourite. The boy was one of the chief singers in the choir, and his sweet girl-voice could often be heard high and clear above the others. In fact, the lad was enthusiastic in all Church matters. But he was often found in Dr. Parker’s surgery.
He would come shyly into the laboratory, and say to the doctor, “Oh, give me something to do.”
Then the surgeon would laugh, and set him to pounding away at a mortar, with a pestle as big as the boy’s arm.
Barclay’s blue eyes would sparkle as he toiled away, and his face got so red, that the freckles that adorned his nose and cheeks quite disappeared for a time.
Then presently he would say, “Oh dear, I am tired, doctor. Please send me on an errand.”
The good doctor would laugh, but never refuse. Then away Barclay would go with a basket of medicine bottles on his arm, and he never made a mistake in delivery.
Moreover, he promoted himself to a sort of doctor’s lieutenant, and never failed to inquire how the patients were, and of his own accord brought back word to the doctor, “Old Mrs. This or old Mr. That was better, or Mrs. So-and-So’s baby had been crying all night,” &c. &c.
This amused the doctor very much, but really the information was of great use to him. And Dr. Parker was not ungrateful. Neither mentally nor financially. I mean, that while he really liked the bold, well-built lad, with his fair hair and his freckled cheeks, he considered it his duty to pay him a weekly sum for his services. The doctor had a right good heart under his waistcoat. But he had one other reason for giving Barclay a wage: Mrs. Stuart lived in a rather small, but pretty cottage half-way up the wooded hill behind the village. She had been wealthy in her time, but her husband died, and lo! she suddenly found herself bereft of all the luxuries she had been used to. She had enough to buy the humble cot in which she now dwelt, and enough and no more to keep the wolf from the door. The whole household consisted of herself, her daughter Phœbe—younger than Barclay—Barclay himself, and a faithful old servant called Priscilla. She taught Phœbe herself; but the parson had taken Barclay’s education in hand, and a right clever and attentive boy he turned out. At fourteen he really knew twice as much as any lad in the village of his own age.
Now Dr. Parker knew very well that the Stuarts were in straitened circumstances, and so he gave to Barclay for work done what he dared not have offered his mother in charity.
Living so close to the sea, and being so frequently out with the fishermen, it is no wonder that he loved the ocean. He had a spice of romance in his character, and he was really speaking the truth from his very heart when, while swimming, as he did every morning, he would quote from Byron’s “Childe Harold” and say, with more enthusiasm perhaps than good elocution,