“Joan, this is the little man I was speaking to you of; he is going to stay with me to-day, perhaps to-morrow, perhaps longer, if we can make him like it. Can’t you find something to entertain him with while I make a few calls?”
Joan’s face was a study as she looked at the tiny, crooked form, the pale face, and the great dark eyes that still lay on the corner of the lounge. First, amazement, then perplexity and the tender pity and readiness to help that are somewhere in every woman’s heart, no matter how sharp the outlines of her shoulders; and in none more warmly than in the old Scotch nurse’s, doubtful as she had looked for a moment.
“Indeed, mon,” she said, “it’s nae sae muckle auld Joan remembers o’ the tricks that used to amuse yoursel’ in days gone by; not that the time’s sae very lang past, either, but it’s brought its changes wi’ it, and I’ve ta’en my share o’ them, I suppose. But I’ll do what’s in my power for ony visitor o’ yours gladly enough, and more than a’ for a tired little heart sic as this seems to be.”
“Well, well,” said the doctor, “I’ll venture it. Tell him some of the marvellous stories I used to hear, or take him in your own part of the house, if he likes, and let him see how we manage to live here all by ourselves. Good-by, my little man; I’ll see you again before you’re half done with Joan,” and he was gone.
It seemed a long time, and yet a short one, before the black horse’s hoofs were heard clattering up to the pavement again. It took all Creepy’s quick wits to follow Joan in her strange talk and make head or tail of what she was saying, and she found something quite as new to herself in the gentle, patient soul, the twisted form, and the “unco sorrowfu’” look that met her out of the brown eyes.
But they both kept their difficulties to themselves, and got bravely along with them; and, best of all to Creepy, Joan was never tired of talking of the doctor.
“It’ll take a lang day and a lang search,” she said, “to find anither man of nae mair years than his that can measure off against his little finger in all that suld mak the warld the better or the happier for his living in it. There’s mair wisdom in his head than in a hundred that think themselves equal wi’ him; an’ sic a braw an’ winsome laddie as he waur, an’ sae strang an’ gladsome, never dree or wearied, an’ I never kenned him afraid to raise his head amang the proudest, nor feel that he couldna fash himsel’ to lift up the weakest and the humblest o’ them a’. Ye canna see it a’ yet, but maybe ye hae kenned him lang enough to get a glimmer o’ the truth. Dinne ye think sae, bairnie?”
“I think,” said Creepy, slowly rising up from where he lay, and fixing the great brown eyes on Joan’s face, “I think the weak and the sick must come to him as they came to the Lord Christ when he was here. Don’t you think He has taught him to be like Himself?”
From that moment Joan would have fought with wild beasts, if it had been necessary, to protect and cherish her new charge.