“But he’s got some little common sense, I hope!” snapped the good doctor. “If he hasn’t, I’ll feel like knocking some into him. I’m going to treat this child and I’m going to cure him; and I’m not going to have ignorance and laziness stand in the way of his growing up to be a bright, hearty boy.
“I’ve thought,” said Dr. Poole reflectively, “that you children living up there in the woods were all hearty and healthy, if you were not much else. Perhaps I’ve neglected my duty about you; I’m not going to do so any more.
“There, Janice Day!” he added, turning again to her, “you are forever starting something in this town. I’m inclined to think you are a regular nuisance—I had enough to do before.”
“Really, Doctor,” murmured Janice mildly. “This was quite involuntary. I couldn’t very well let the poor little thing die.”
“Hah! neither can I,” grunted Dr. Poole. “That’s what I mean. I’ve got to do something about these Trimmins people. I can see that plainly. I don’t know that I’m so dreadfully grateful to you for awakening my conscience in their behalf.”
Janice drove home carefully, glad that little Buddy Trimmins was out of danger; but it must be confessed that she feared what the morrow—Saturday—would bring forth regarding her breaking of the speed law on her errand of mercy.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE ELDER’S INDIGNATION
Marty came home full of it from the village that evening. Janice had not said a word about her adventure of the afternoon, and Aunt ’Mira had been too involved in her own particular troubles to notice the gravity of her niece’s face.
Aunt ’Mira had essayed the making of a pegtop skirt for street wear. As she told Janice, “it fitted jest beautifully” over the hips. But when she came to try it on, it was so narrow around her shoe-tops that she couldn’t walk in it “no better than a hobbled hen!”
“And I can’t slit it up the side same’s Miz’ Scattergood did hern,” confessed Aunt ’Mira; “for Jason wouldn’t stand for it. He’s a mild-tempered man; he kin be coaxed or led jest so fur, but he’d never stand for me wearin’ a slit skirt. If I went to church in it I b’lieve I’d find the door locked ag’in me when I got home. An’, b’sides,” whispered the troubled lady, “I never can keep my stockin’s from wrinklin’, and they might show! That Bowman girl’s do.”