The doctor thought so too. Creepy was off the lounge the next day, and in a day or two more insisted upon beginning to open the door for patients again. The pain was there still, and bad enough, it is true, and there was too much of the old expression in his smile; but there he was, going quietly about again, very much as if nothing had happened, except indeed that there was no strength yet.
“Look at that!” said the doctor. “If one visit from a boy four years older than himself has been such a medicine, what would it have been if he could have gone to school with twenty of his own age, as I wanted him to, instead of being hunted down by a set of—well, no matter what they were—the very first day I trusted him among them!”
The doctor was right, but he hadn’t got hold of quite the whole of it. Aleck’s visit had done a great work, true enough, but the best part of it was helping Creepy to clinch the victory the doctor’s words had set him to fighting for just before. And if he had lost the feeling, perhaps for ever, that had made Mrs. Ganderby notice how light his step was, and how he “held up his head to look other folks in the face,” there was something else keeping his heart warm, and giving him courage for what might be before him. He couldn’t help seeing what he had to meet; no one could convince him that it was not there; but he would be one of the King’s soldiers; he would fight as bravely as he could!
CHAPTER XV.
Examination-day passed off as it always did at the professor’s school, creditably, if not brilliantly, for teachers and scholars. Aleck was decidedly the star, but Carter and Davis both did well; and in the lower classes Hal and Tom came off with a very respectable score and some flying colors. Tom had kept out of Hal’s way as he would have avoided rocks and shallows if he had been putting to sea; and Hal was for once so entirely engrossed in keeping his own lookout, that he had no leisure to watch for slips in his neighbors, or to enjoy them if they happened to occur. There was enough for the boys to talk over for at least the first week of holidays, and Carter lost very little time in getting hold of Aleck for a talk about past, present, and future. The future had the best of it, though, and he was jubilant over the prospect that it gave.
“Isn’t that what you call pretty jolly?” he went on. “Carter & Co. have consented at last, and are going to give me a chance in life, instead of making me into a wooden thing mounted on a stool and doing short sums in arithmetic for them all day! Just imagine me standing on the quarter-deck and giving orders to every soul on board, and feeling my vessel bound over the blue waves as I direct!”
Aleck laughed.
“Do you expect to take command the day you go aboard?”