“What is that thing hanging round Lammy’s neck by a string under his shirt that he has such a tight hold of?”
“It’s the key of the lower one of his chest of drawers; he keeps odds and ends in it that he sets store by, and I guess he’s lost it so many times that he’s took to hanging it on safe by a string.”
The next afternoon when Dr. Jedd came, the smile on his face reassured Mrs. Lane even before he said: “No, it isn’t typhoid—merely plain malaria, and his worrying so much about Bird has made him light-headed. What has become of the child? Tired as she was in the spring, I would not answer for her little wild-wood ladyship after a hot summer in the city.”
Then Mrs. Lane told sadly of the frequent invitations and the unanswered letters.
“I’m going to town for a little vacation after the holidays, and I will look her up myself,” said the doctor, cheerily.
******
It was many weeks after the night that Lammy chopped up the pewter tea-pot and made his wonderful discovery before the fever left him, and then he felt so limp and weak that after sitting up a few minutes he was glad to crawl into bed again. His mind had only wandered during the first two or three days, but frequently he would wake up with a start from troubled sleep and ask his mother anxiously if it was really true about the tea-pot or only a dream. He was bitterly disappointed when the night before the auction came and the doctor told him that he must not go, even though his big brother Nellis had offered to put the great arm-chair in the cart and take him down in that way, all wrapped in comfortables. For the doctor said the excitement of thinking of the matter was enough without being there.
On his way out, Dr. Jedd spent a few moments before he went home, chatting to Joshua in the kitchen.