That was enough; Joan was fairly launched.
“Hoot, laddie, and where suld the bairnie be, but moping over a book in some corner or anither o’ the house? It’s little change frae that he has; and what wi’ his books and the pain, and nae companions to run in the free sunshine wi’, e’en if he had the strength to do it, we shall no find we ha’ him wi’ us much longer; either the gude Lord will take him a’thegither frae our hands, or we shall hae no bairn at a’, but only a little auld mon, withered and shrunken before his time.”
“And what do you propose to do about it, Joan?”
“What wad I propose to do? Ye ken weel eneugh it’s na proposing or disposing o’ mine, to say what suld be done wi’ the bairn. It were no notion o’ mine sending him to the school i’ the first place; but I’m no sae sure I wadna be more favorable to trying something o’ the kind once mair, provided sic a place could be found and sic companions as wouldn’t trample the soul out o’ his body before they had time to see what it waur made of. But I’m e’en thinking he might hae mair strength to bear a little rough wind now, and it’s a cruel and unnatural thing to let a bairn o’ his age ken nae mair o’ life than lies within these four walls and the covers o’ his book, except indeed when the one friend he has outside comes to talk a bit wi’ him, or tak him to pass an hour at his ain house now and then.”
“And you don’t think that’s as much as any reasonable man could ask?” said the doctor, as a vision of Nelly Halliday, as she stopped one day with her pony-chaise to leave Thorndyke, as every one called him now, at the door, rose up before him.
“As muckle as what?” asked Joan, quite in a puzzle. “I dinna a’thegither understand how muckle it may be, but mercifu’ as it is, and sent frae the Lord’s pity, it’s no eneugh. It’s no eneugh for ony bairn to gang frae his book to the front-door all day lang, and never a step farther into the world, and never feel his blood stirred wi’ ony little brush in life, and always wearing a patient, sorrowfu’ look that’s eneugh to grieve the hardest heart that could look upon it. Not that I wad hae the boldness to bring aught before your notice as if ye couldna see the whole wi’ far better een than mysel’.”
The doctor got up and paced the room a few times after Joan went out, and when he sat down again, he had come to another decision. Not that Joan had put any new thoughts into his mind; she had only dropped a spark upon tinder that he had been gathering together for some months past, as he watched Thorndyke from week to week. He was no slower to act upon a decision than a year ago, and in fifteen minutes more the black horse stood before Halliday’s, and the doctor was having a little private talk behind the desk.
“I’d like to put him in here,” he was saying, “for I can’t think of any place where he would do so well. The boy has got brains enough to make almost anything, and I meant to have made a doctor of him, and one that would have found high-water mark in his profession before many years; but that’s all over now. If all I can do for him can give him strength to get over here two or three times a day and meet his work after he gets here, it’s the most I can hope for; but we’ll make a man of him yet, and one we can both be proud of, if you’ll take him after he gets here and do what you can for him. And I assure you, you shall not be the loser, if you can manage the matter for me as I wish.”
Mr. Halliday looked thoughtful, but not because he was hesitating as to his answer. He was thinking of the time when some one, once long ago, had it in his power to decide for him whether he should be anything or nothing in the world.
He turned suddenly with a smile,