Harry Fenimore's Principles

by Isabel Thompson Hopkins

CHAPTER VI.

How the October and November days flitted away! And when one knew that December was coming, and the wheels of the queer chair could never rattle over the frozen ground and plough through the snow! It made no difference, time scurried on just the same. The only comfort was in making the most of it, and that was certainly done at the almshouse. Nobody counted the number of times the wheel-chair was seen going slowly and carefully down toward the wonderful world that lay out beyond the turn, or up the other way toward the city. And sure as the hour came round, there was Sue ready for her part in the doctor’s programme, and many a time the work carried her back to old days until she forgot her bargain, and the half hour stretched on into two or three times its length. How the pages were turned over in that arithmetic! But that wasn’t all for Creepy. There were the doctor’s visits! When he was there, such wonder, and such content; and when he was gone, there were the hours to be counted till he would come again. Every one in the house came to know the sound of the black horse’s trot, coming down the road, and just how many seconds might be allowed between its being reined up and the doctor’s having his hand on the door-knob. Very few they were, the listeners soon found; there was hardly time for Creepy’s heart to give a bound and say, “There he is!” But after he was once at Creepy’s side, no one would have dreamed that he was in a hurry. Time enough to hear just how many drives Enoch had given him, and to see the lessons that had been gone over, and to ask here and there, carelessly as it seemed, about the pain, and how the medicines were going. Then there was always a little chat about what he had seen going on in the city, and what the boys were doing there, so that, as he used to say laughing, Creepy shouldn’t be altogether behind the times when he took his place among them. Then a moment with Mrs. Ganderby, or a compliment to Enoch, or Sue, and he was off again.

And all the while the days were slipping by, until November, dull and grim as some of its last hours had been, was fairly crowded out, the ground was frozen hard, and a few flakes of snow came fluttering down. Then the doctor found Enoch standing, cap in hand, in the hall, looking at the crooked chair, which, if it had been queer at first, was certainly queerer still since he had rigged the “running-gear.”

“Is there any trouble, Enoch?” he asked, for the old carpenter was running his hand through his hair, and with the most uncomfortable expression upon his face.

“Ah, sir, you never came in better time,” said Enoch; “it’s plain enough there’ll be no further use for these wheels this year, and they make an awkward thing to be standing about in the way; and yet it’s a job I don’t like to put my hand to, to undo a piece of work like that. And it’s only a few months after all.”

“A few months till when?” asked the doctor.

“Why, sir, till they’re wanted again,” said Enoch, staring in the wonder whether the doctor had asked a stupid question for once.

“Well,” said the doctor, “if you intend to keep a hospital here for broken legs and crippled children, I advise you to take good care of your wheels, but so far as my little patient is concerned, the sooner you make kindling-wood of them the better. I intend to have him walking into the city every day when the roads are settled again in the spring.”

Enoch’s stare grew ten times broader, but it was of no use. The doctor was gone, and if he had not been, Enoch would never have dared to ask him which of them had lost his senses.