“So you don’t say no? You are not afraid to try?”
Creepy shook his head.
“Shall we begin to-morrow?”
“Yes.”
“Good,” said the doctor, with a quick but gentle pressure of the strong arms, and then they placed Creepy carefully in the queer chair; the doctor looked closely into his face once, and said Good-by. In another moment he had passed over the walk where the scattered seeds were to make so much trouble, sprung into the chaise, and given the rein to the black horse, and the sound of its hoofs was ringing back from halfway down to the turn in the road under the yellow trees.
Great was the excitement in the almshouse when the matron, after bottling up the news of the doctor’s visit all day long, poured it out on the returning party in the evening.
“He had been there for nothing in the world but to see the poor crooked thing, though with manners enough to make a show of asking for the rest, and had sat talking under the butternut-tree for a full half hour, five times as long as he had ever stayed by Ben when he was dying; which she couldn’t get the child to repeat the half he had said; but the most she could make out was, he was coming every day, or for aught she knew three times a day, to try some plan of his own to straighten the poor thing out: which she was sure it was more like the Lord regarding the sparrows sold for a farthing than any other happening she had ever seen, if he had sent a young man of the sense and skill of that one, all unrequested, to lay himself out to mend a little life like that. And no one could be more rejoiced than she if he could do it, nor more ready to give praise for a miracle of her own times, though at the same time she knew it was only a young doctor who could afford to go about picking up cases that never sent for him, and that nobody could say were responsible to him in one way or another, if he did not choose to see it.”
The basket of nuts for the winter evenings, which had made such work with the arms of one after another of the party before they got it home, was forgotten where it stood, while they listened with open mouths and ears to the matron’s speech, and when Enoch in his haste to go and see if Creepy looked just the same after what had happened, struck it with his foot and sent the contents rolling half across the room, no one said a word, or stirred from his place to gather them up.
“Dear, dear!” said Sue, “but the Lord remembers all in their turn, if they do but wait his time! And it’s come sooner to him than to some, but there never was patienter waiting, nor would have been for a hundred times as long, if it had been His will!”
“Well, there’ll be waiting enough yet, to see what comes of it all,” said the matron. “Sometimes doctors cure and sometimes they kill, and sometimes they do nothing at all, which it remains to be seen whether it will be one or the other with the poor crooked thing.”