“That’s he! that’s Rocket! I knew he’d come. I’ve only been waiting for him to start on that long journey. Ho! Aunt Eunice! Pack my clothes. I’m going away where I shan’t mortify Ad any more. Hurry up. Rocket is growing impatient. Don’t you hear him pawing the turf? I’m coming, my boy, I’m coming!” and he attempted to leap upon the floor, but the doctor’s strong arm held him down, while Alice, whose voice alone he heeded, strove to quiet him.
“I wouldn’t go away to-day,” she said soothingly. “Some other time will do as well, and Rocket can wait.”
“Will you stay with me?” Hugh asked.
“Yes, I’ll stay,” was Alice’s reply.
“All right, all right. Tell Claib to put up Rocket, till another day, and then we’ll go together, you and I,” and Hugh sank back upon his pillow, just as the wheezy colonel come in, greatly alarmed and surprised to find the young man so ill.
“It beats all,” he said, “how symptoms differ. That buzzing he complained of wasn’t an atom like my wife’s—beats all;” then turning to Alice he delivered a message from Ellen who was better, and had expressed a wish to see Miss Johnson, hoping she might be induced to return with her father.
But Alice would not leave Hugh, and she declined the colonel’s invitation.
“That’s right. Stick to him,” the colonel said. “He’s a noble fellow, odd as Dick’s hat band, but got the right kind of spirit. Poor boy. It makes me feel to see him some as I felt when my Hal lay ravin’ mad with the dumb fever in his head. Poor Hal! He is up in the grave-yard now. Good day to you all. I’ve got a pesky job on hand getting that Rocket home.”
And the colonel was right, for Rocket stubbornly refused to move, kicking and biting as he had done once before when any one approached him. He had taken his stand near by the block where Hugh had been accustomed to mount him, and there he staid, evidently waiting for his master, sometimes glancing toward the house and uttering a low whinny.
“I reckon I’ll have to leave him here for a spell,” the colonel said at last when every stratagem had been resorted to in vain.