“‘I’ve got a perfec’ beauty,’ says I, an’ so I had—ordered a new one for old Miss Pringle an’ then she didn’t take it—said her old one acted better after all, an’ she’d concluded to try it a spell longer. So me an’ th’ Doctor went out to the ‘Extension’ [the shed where the storekeeper kept his stoves when he had any, and the pots and pans required by the village housekeepers]. ‘Ain’t that splendid?’ says I, pointing to it.
“Th’ Doctor danced around that stove—you know how he steps off on the tips of his toes when he’s pleased—an’ set his spectacles a dozen times to get a better view, an’ finally he says, ‘Don’t you s’pose she’d like it?’ I never see him so anxious about anythin’.
“‘Why don’t you get your sister to come an’ pick it out for herself?’ I says, finally. He kep’ a-dancin’ around so.
“‘’Tain’t for my sister,’ he says; ‘it’s for Polly Pepper.’
“‘O my land!’ says I.
“‘Yes, it would go to any one’s heart to see that little girl.’
“Dr. Fisher stopped dancing and faced me quite severe. ‘Why—well, I don’t know what to say when I think of her. An’ now her eyes—’
“Well then, th’ Doctor whips out that big handkerchief of his, an’ he blows his nose—pretended he’d got an awful cold—till you’d’a’ thought ’twas Gabriel’s trump, an’ then he says, ‘I’m goin’ to send her a new stove in place of that broken-down old thing that Ben stuffs up with putty, an’—’
“An’ I says, ‘O my land, I didn’t know that!’ an’ I was all struck of a heap to think I might ’a’ give Polly a stove, an’ eased up things a mite for the little-brown-house folks, an’ th’ Doctor grabs my arm, an’ he says, ‘It’s to be kep’ quite secret. Be sure, Atkins, you don’t let a soul know,’—an’ I said I wouldn’t, cross my heart, an’ all that. An’ then I put my foot in it, for I says, ‘Let me give half o’ that stove, Doctor.’
“I tell you, he was real mad then. Did you ever see th’ little Doctor mad? Well, he swelled up till he actually looked big, an’ his eyes—my gracious! they was so fierce, I says, ‘’Xcuse me,’ an’ then he ca’med down, an’ told me th’ stove was to go that afternoon. An’ then he paid me, an’ bolted out as if he’d ben caught doin’ somethin’ bad.”