"I'll"--began Theodore, then wisely concluding to raise no hopes that might not be realised, he changed his sentence to, "I'll find out if there's a doctor that will come for nothin'. I believe there is one. Can ye read, Tommy?"
The sick boy shook his head. "How could I?" he answered. "Ain't nobody ter show me nothin'."
"Wonder 'f I couldn't," said Theo, thoughtfully. "I c'n tell ye the letters anyhow, an' that'll be better'n nothin'."
A bit of torn newspaper lay on the floor beside the bed. He picked it up and pointed out A, O and S, to Tommy. By the time the little cripple had thoroughly mastered those three letters so that he could pick them out every time, the women had given up their quarrel. Mrs. Green had taken up her baby and was feeding it, and the other women, with sullen faces, had resumed their neglected duties.
"Oh dear! Must you go?" Tommy exclaimed as Theo got off the cot on which he had been sitting. "But you was real good to come, anyhow. When'll ye come again an' tell me some more letters?"
"I'll show ye one ev'ry day if I can get time. Then in three weeks you'll know all the big ones an' some o' the little ones that are just like the big ones. Now don't ye forget them three."
"You bet I won't. I shall say 'em a hundred times 'fore to-morrow," rejoined the little fellow, and his eyes followed his new friend eagerly until the door closed behind him.
As for Theodore himself, half the weight seemed to have been lifted from his own heart as he went down the stairs again.
"I'll run outside a minute 'fore I go to supper," he said to himself. "The air was awful thick in that room. Reckon that's one thing makes Tommy feel so bad."
He walked briskly around two or three squares, and as he came back to the house he noticed that the girl and the baby still sat where he had seen them an hour before. The baby's cry had ceased, but it began again as Theo was passing the two. He stopped and looked at them. The girl's eyes rested on his face with a dull, indifferent glance.