“So,” said the doctor that evening, as Creepy lay curled up in the sofa-corner for a rest, “do you remember the two things we talked about under the old butternut-tree? Fishing and going to school, weren’t they? Well, now we’ve tried one of them and like it pretty well, hadn’t we better be getting ready for the other?”
Creepy only laughed and drew himself up with a look that rewarded the doctor for all the pains he had taken. It was the “Why not you?” smiling quietly out of his eyes, for after he had really gone fishing with the doctor, what else might not come to pass?
But not quite yet. Creepy must get used to as much of the new wine of life as he was tasting now before the doctor could venture on filling any nearer to the brim; and moreover he was afraid the “Why not you?” was still a pretty feeble little thing. If anything should happen to crush it down and break it off to the roots, he did not know as he should ever be able to raise it again. He was very much afraid the “All but me” would start up once more and choke it out for ever.
So Creepy went on with his lessons, and understood Joan better every day, and drove about behind the black horse until the palaces and castles began to look more like houses for real men and women. But best of all was a walk now and then quite by himself past Nelly Halliday’s window, and more than once he had come home with just such a handful of treasures as had set him beside himself the first day he came into the city.
But if Creepy was getting used to the affair of the flowers, and began to take it quietly, so that it didn’t set him in a toss any more, the doctor didn’t seem to be.
“Pshaw!” he said to himself as he saw them, “that’s the privilege a child has without asking for it! I’d give a month of my life to see a face like that again, and I don’t dare even to steal a look through the side of my chaise as I drive by, while he can walk up to the very window-pane and wait till it opens to him.”
But he only asked quietly, “Who gave them to you, my little man?”
“The princess,” said Creepy, seriously enough.
The doctor laughed, and said, “Good,” again, but the second time Creepy had a different answer.