“You’ll find lots to do, Tom, and that is one of the greatest things, after all; and there’s One that will be sure to see, and think a good deal of it, too.”
He kept saying it over to himself, and the rest of what Aleck had said about “some one caring for him, while he went about his work for other people.” And he needed it all; “pretty tough,” Aleck called the sudden change in his prospects, when he heard of it, but even then he hadn’t the least idea how Tom dreaded coming so directly in Hal’s way as he knew he should, every day. That seemed to be the last and bitterest drop in the cup! Not that Hal wasn’t a good fellow; he knew he was, and that he would do him many a kind turn before the year was out, but—pshaw! he must get over being such a goose!
CHAPTER XIX.
Thorndyke had left the store just as Mr. Willoughby picked Tom up; he never stayed in the evening and it was six o’clock now. But he had an errand to do that took him past the little cottage with the bay window, and there stood Jet and the doctor’s chaise. And the doctor himself came out of the door, just as he came in sight again on his way back.
“Stand still, Jet!” said the doctor, and Jet pawed the ground till Thorndyke came up. The doctor reached him a hand, he climbed in, and Jet’s hoofs struck sparks again as he carried them towards home. The doctor scarcely spoke, but there was a shining in his eyes that made Thorndyke feel he could say a good deal if he chose; indeed he had seen it there every day of late; he wondered if anything had happened!
But when he came into the office, he was sitting as quietly over a medical review as if nothing had ever happened, or would ever happen, and Thorndyke took his own book and his own seat in the window. But it did not last long; Thorndyke heard a flutter and a fall, and the doctor had sent the magazine flying.
“Come over here, Thorndyke,” he said; “I want to say something to you.”
Thorndyke started, but before he had got halfway, the doctor met him, and stood there with his hands on his shoulders, and looking full into his eyes with the shining out of his own brighter than ever.