“Only think, Sis!” he cried, as soon as he was within speaking distance, “the blacksmith has a registered dog bull pup, with just as good a pedigree as Pam’s—a son of imported Black-eye who is owned over in Gordon. He’s got a pedigree a mile long all written out, but it’s smudged and mussy, and the blacksmith has offered me a dollar to copy it out on a fan-shaped paper like mine. That will just come in handy to pay Pam’s tax, too; it’s due up here the 1st of January. Then you see next year we’ll go in partnership, and raise some pups, and fifty dollars apiece is the very least we can get for them, and maybe a hundred for the dogs, if they’re clever!”
The elder men smiled at each other, and the doctor said to Silent Stead, “Enthusiasm is an element that can be ill spared from materia medica,—it will do you good even to get a whiff of it.” To Brooke: “Good-by for now, my child; your father will have all that can be done for him. A sloping platform from the kitchen door will allow him to be wheeled out in pleasant weather, and time and care alone will show the result. Remember, do not hesitate to send for me if you are puzzled—and courage! the courage that is always given to the world’s workers at their need,” and the good physician, the spiritual son of St. Luke of old, took his place by Stead, who turned Manfred in the direction of the Gilead station.
Meanwhile Tatters had disappeared, and when Brooke went indoors again, realizing too late that she had not yet thanked Silent Stead, she found the dog stretched by her father’s chair, an indoor post he thereafter occupied.
A little after two o’clock Brooke set out for Mrs. Fenton’s, leaving her mother to superintend the unpacking of the simpler things, clothes, books, and the little table furniture that they had deemed best to save from the wreck and bring with them, a task in which Miss Keith seemed to revel so unfeignedly that Brooke began her walk with an unusual sense of freedom.
She had gone only a few hundred yards when she remembered Tatters, and, turning back to get him, found that he was already close behind, and hurrying as if life or death depended upon his escort. “How did you know I was coming? How did you get out?” she asked him, and then laughed at herself for expecting a reply other than the short, joyous bark he gave, as he circled around her, pawing up the snow, inviting her to play with clumsy, stiff gestures that plainly said, “I know I am rather an old fellow for this sort of thing, but I’m willing to do anything I can to amuse you,” while he even raced after the snowballs she threw at random, and rashly tried to retrieve one, dropping it hastily at her feet with a comical expression, showing by a twist of his jaw and rubbing his nose between his paws that it was too cold for his teeth.
The walk was up an almost straight hill, relieved by occasional resting-places by which alone travel in such a country is made possible to man or beast, so that when Brooke reached the gate of the Fenton house she paused, both for breath and to get her bearings. No pathway had been shovelled to the front door, and the beaten track led round the side of the house to a wide porch at the south, which also held a well-house in its shelter, and this Brooke followed.
Her knock at the door was followed by a rumbling sound from within, which began in an opposite corner of the house, and drew rapidly nearer; then the door opened outward, singularly enough, and just inside it sat a little old lady in a wheel-chair that she both guided and propelled with her own hands.