Harry Fenimore's Principles

by Isabel Thompson Hopkins

The never-failing answer came to Creepy’s lips, but he did not speak.

“Do you know what runs across the road, just beyond the turn under those yellow trees? There is a brook down there, and not far below it passes through a shady spot, and gets very deep and almost as cold as ice. That’s the very place for trout! Suppose you and I go down when the season comes round again, say next spring, for instance. There are some great rocks there under the trees, and we could take it as lazily as we liked.”

Now the doctor knew very well that if he had proposed that Creepy should take him on his shoulders and prance away moonward, he could not have amazed and bewildered him more; and it showed plainly enough in Creepy’s face, but the doctor would not understand.

“You think it strange I could find the time, don’t you? That is true enough; it could not come very often—once in a season, perhaps, as a great treat. But for to-day it is pleasure enough to sit here in the sunshine. I wonder who made this bench? The same hand that fitted your chair, perhaps?”

“No,” said Creepy; “it was Ben. He used to make them while he was a gardener. He got roots and crooked branches in the woods and twisted them together. That was while he was waiting.”

“Waiting?” asked the doctor. “What was he waiting for?”

“Waiting to be gathered in. The matron says we’re all waiting. All but me.”

“And why not you? Are you in such haste that you cannot wait? You must wait for spring, before we go fishing, at least. Then you shall help me gather branches for just such a seat. I must have one on my piazza. That is to say, if you can get away from school then, eh?” and the doctor tossed out more seeds, and they floated away and showered down over the walk, to start up and make Enoch a deal of hoeing in the spring.

But nothing to compare with the thoughts he had tossed, and with seemingly a more careless hand, into Creepy’s heart in the five minutes he had been sitting on the rustic seat that had been such a pride to Ben. And there was no waiting with them. Every one had struck root already, and sprung up into some sudden, bewildering feeling, until there was a terrible confusion in the little hot-bed. Why had the doctor come to see him? No one ever came; no one ever sat down to talk with him. Every one was kind, always kind; but every one went on his own way. Go fishing! He go fishing? Had he not just told him he never went anywhere? Could not he see for himself, for did not a doctor know everything? And how should he help him cut down trees, or how should he go to school? Schools were made for every one else, that is true; but no one, except Ben, had ever helped him even so far as to read. Was the doctor mocking him? Did he not see that he was only made to sit in his shapeless chair, and feel the pain going up and down the crooked back like a devouring thing? Why did he talk to him as he would talk to any one else?