“I’ve been thinking about that,” Dr. Pierce answered briskly. “I guess Granny and Annie will have to let me take Dicky for a while. A few months in my hospital and he’ll be jumping round here like a frog with the toothache.”
“Oh, Dr. Pierce, do you think you can cure him?” Mrs. Dore asked, clasping her hands.
“Cure him!” Dr. Pierce answered with his jolliest laugh. “Of course we can. He’s not in half so bad a condition as Maida was when we straightened her out. Greinschmidt taught us a whole bag of tricks. Dicky could almost mend himself if he’d only stay still long enough. Look at Maida. Would you ever think she’d been much worse than Dicky?”
Everybody stared hard at Maida, seated on her father’s knee, and she dimpled and blushed under the observation. She was dressed all in white—white ribbons, white sash, white socks and shoes, the softest, filmiest white cobweb dress. Her hair streamed loose—a cascade of delicate, clinging ringlets of the palest gold. Her big, gray eyes, soft with the happiness of the long day, reflected the firelight. Her cheeks had grown round as well as pink and dimpled.
She did not look sick.
“Oh, Dicky,” she cried, “just think, you’re going to be cured. Didn’t I tell you when my father saw you, he’d fix it all right? My father’s a magician!”
But Dicky could not answer. He was gulping furiously to keep back the tears of delight. But he smiled his radiant smile. Billy took everybody’s attention away from him by turning an unexpected cartwheel in the middle of the floor.
Finally, Maida announced that it was time for the tree. They formed in line and marched into the shop to a tune that Billy thumped out of the silver-toned old spinet.
I wish you could have heard the things the children said.