“The princess cut them for me, but some one else who was with her jumped through the window and brought them to me. He was handsome, too,” and then the doctor had two to envy, instead of one.
He would not have disturbed himself much about it, though, if he had seen that it was only Aleck, and had heard him at that very moment telling Nelly, with great fun in his eyes, that it was all very fine for him to play humble servant and dispense her favors, until some older pair of beseeching eyes than their new visitor’s should stand pleading before the door.
But Nelly’s sweet thoughts were wandering off after Creepy, and she would have envied the doctor to his heart’s content had she known that he had the happiness of doing every day and all day long what had only fallen in her way two or three times, and might never come again.
“I wish we knew where the little fellow lives, Aleck, and whom he belongs to. Somebody is kind to him, I know; but it seems strange they don’t provide him with a few flowers of his own, he seems so ravenous for them. I’m almost glad they don’t, though, it is so delightful to have him coming here now and then.”
The doctor thought it strange, too, and was just then berating himself for a stupid fellow, that it had never occurred to him how they would have brightened up the almshouse the last winter. However, he couldn’t be altogether sorry, and if things had come round so that Miss Halliday’s flowers were straying into the office, and bringing in a light and a fragrance such as the dull, old room had never known before, it was too pleasant to quarrel with altogether.
“An’ what’s the doctor been making up his mind to, now, I wonder?” said old Joan to herself as she lingered about with her dusting one morning. “Something, I ken well eneugh by the glint in his een and the close-pulled line about his lips. Something is sure to happen when his face sets itsel’ that fashion;” and she was right.
“Joan,” he said, “the boy is ready to go to school. It is high time; it’s altogether too dull music shut up here with only an old woman and a young doctor to speak to from one day to another. The last term of the year is half out, it is true, but he had better go the half and make a few acquaintances to amuse himself with through the long vacation, and then he’ll be ready to start fair and square when the next year begins.”
“Hoot, mon,” she said, “canna ye see that the wee bairnie is doing weel enough whaur he bides, that ye maun tak him and turn him loose amang a parcel o’ boys that’s mair like wild animals than anything fit to be trusted wi’ a tender flower ye hae but just now taught to haud up its head a bit at the best? Only let ane o’ them trample down your wark wi’ a rough-shod foot, an’ whaur would it be then?”
“That would be an ugly piece of work,” said the doctor; “but boys are not so bad as you think, and a wild animal would be a mild term for one that wouldn’t lend a helping hand when a little fellow like Creepy came in his way. And that’s the very thing I want; there are some things you and I can’t do for him, let our will be ever so good.”