“I’m not tired,” cried Davie, and in a minute he had the bowl and was going carefully up the loft stairs.
“Now that blessed child is just like the rest o’ th’ childern,” mused old Mrs. Beebe, sinking down in a chair. “Davie’s quiet, but he get’s there all the same.”
And Davie’s little legs “got there all the same” through the dark days when Joel went deeper and deeper into the gloom. And the little brown house people held their breath in very dread of the coming hours. And good Doctor Fisher lay awake every night after the day’s hard work, going over and over in his troubled mind how he might save Mrs. Pepper’s boy.
“O dear me!” a voice broke in upon the woodshed, where Davie sat on the chopping-block. His legs ached dreadfully, but he wasn’t thinking of them. He was awfully afraid he was going to cry after all, and he twisted up his small cheeks, and held his hands together oh, oh so tightly!
“Just as I expected,” Miss Jerusha Henderson put her head in, “all this talk about the Pepper childern workin’ to help their mother is just rubbish,” she sniffed and came up to the chopping-block; “there you set, you lazy boy, you.”
“I’m not a lazy boy,” said David, getting off from the chopping-block. “Mamsie told me there wasn’t anything to do now.” His little cheeks burned like fire.
“Anything to do!” Miss Jerusha raised her long fingers and waved them about. “Did I ever—and look at all this messy place! Why ain’t you choppin’ wood, I sh’d like to know?”
“Mamsie told me not to do anything till she called me.” His head ached dreadfully, and he wanted to run, but he stood his ground.
“If ever I saw a woman who spoiled her childern, it’s your Ma,” said Miss Jerusha, sniffing again. “It’s no wonder she has trouble.”
David swallowed hard, then he looked up into her snappy little black eyes. “I wish you’d go away,” he said quietly.