What was he saying? Who? He said a great many things that seemed like dreaming, and yet, he surely would not say them, if they did not seem real to him!
As for a bit of this life belonging to Creepy, he didn’t call that a dream any longer, since he had the doctor’s friendship; it seemed to him he not only lived, but basked in the sunshine, since that joy had come in. But God’s world, the real, great, wonderful world that lay out beyond the turn in the road, out beyond the city even, stretching away into beauty and treasure that he often tired himself with trying to imagine; ah, that could never be! That was for the well and the strong and the rich; for people who rode in their carriages, and would only think him fit to run after them and open the carriage-door. For the doctor too, of course, for every one ran after him, and he would be rich some day. But for himself—
The doctor stooped, shot a look into his eyes, and saw it all. In another moment he had lifted Creepy gently in his arms, as he did that first day under the old butternut, and was holding his face right before his own.
“Look here, my little man,” he was saying, “I want to have this thing understood once for all. I have been trying to put some new ideas into this head of yours, these three months now, but I have not succeeded as well as I wish, and I must see if I can make myself understood this time. Who do you think made this world, and who do you think He made it for, this King of ours who has taught us all to call him Father? Don’t you know that whatever a king owns, the princes have a share in as heirs; and more than that, there’s a dominion set apart for them now and then, as a birthright? This is a great, glorious, beautiful world, as everything our King makes is, and he made it for us, his children; and the Prince Royal, our Elder Brother, who came and walked among us, bought it again for us by his life and his death, after things began to go wrong. I tell you, my boy, we’re of royal blood, you and I, just as much as the greatest man that other men bow down to; we can’t be more than the children of the King, any of us. Only see to it that you keep close to the Prince Royal, and follow his steps like a child of the house, and you can claim your share with the tallest and the strongest of the sons. And if you don’t get hold of a square acre that men will call your own, in the course of your life, you can look at the blue hills and the soft skies, and walk among the broad fields and the flowers, with just as happy and as glad a throb in your heart as the people who have paid thousands for them. Do you understand, little man? Do you believe what I say?”
Once more Creepy couldn’t have spoken for his life; but though the understanding and the believing that the doctor was asking for were only stealing over the edge of his heart, like the first ray of morning, yet they were making a glow there not so very different from the rosy light he had seen the dawn spread over the snow-drift under his window. It flushed up to his cheek with very much the same color, and satisfied the doctor better than words could have done. With the same quiet, gentle pressure that Creepy remembered so well, he placed him in his chair again and was gone.
He was gone, and Creepy stood by the window once more; but was it the same little almshouse cripple that had looked out from it in the morning? It seemed to him that chains had fallen from him, as his heart opened wider and wider to the doctor’s words. The warm glow grew to a great throbbing joy, and he felt himself stretching up from the stunted little soul he had been, and almost laying his hand upon things more joyful than he had ever dreamed that even a strong man could reach.
The Prince Royal his Elder Brother? That meant the Lord Christ, of course. The doctor had spoken of him more than once, but Creepy had not dared put the “all but me,” aside then. But why not? Keep close to Him? Why shouldn’t he? Didn’t he come close to the doctor? and wasn’t the Lord Jesus like him, only a thousand times stronger, and wiser and gentler even than he; for wasn’t He a physician himself when He was here, and wasn’t He always the same? Did He not call the weak and the lame to Him, and did He not once take some of them in his arms, just as the doctor had taken him to-day? Children of the King, and the Elder Brother sharing his birthright with them? Oh, how different the world looked this time out of the queer old window! He stood still and almost held his breath, for it seemed to him as he looked up into the blue sky, that he felt some one drawing near, and the same bewildering joy that had come when he first felt the doctor’s arms around him, rose up in his heart once more, only stronger and deeper than before. For was not this some one who would never go away?
“Which I did say,” exclaimed Mrs. Ganderby to Sue, a few days afterwards, as Creepy passed through the room with two or three of his precious books in his hand, “which I did say wonders never would cease; and here is the showing of it before our own eyes, for I mentioned at the same time that sometimes doctors cure and sometimes they kill, and sometimes they do neither one nor the other; and here it is, not only that he’s getting the poor crooked thing where he’s going about so light on his feet that the name Creepy will soon be no further use to him; but the child that I thought would never learn to look anybody in the face otherwise than to beg their pardon for being in the world at all, is certainly getting a way of holding up his head and going about as if he’d found out that his soul was his own, in spite of anything that heaven or some people that were lower hadn’t seen fit to do for his body, which there is no one could be more pleased than myself to look on and see it, though if it isn’t altogether like a miracle of the olden times, I don’t know what any one could put themselves about to call it.”