“I’m glad!” I cried.
He ignored this. “I find it hard, Davy,” said he, after a pause, “not to resent your displeasure. Did I not know you so well—were I less fond of the real Davy Roth—I should have you ask my pardon. However, I have not come up to tell you that; but this: you can, perhaps, with a good heart hold enmity against a dying man; but the physician, Davy, may not. Do you understand, Davy?”
“I’m sorry I done what I did, zur,” I muttered, contritely. “But I’m wonderful glad the man’s dead.”
“For shame!”
“I’m glad!”
He left me in a huff.
“An’ I’ll be glad,” I shouted after him, at the top of my voice, “if I got t’ go ’t hell for it!”
’Twas my nature.
Tom Tot returned downcast from Wayfarer’s Tickle: having for three days sought his daughter, whom he could not find; nor was word of her anywhere to be had. Came, then, the winter—with high winds and snow and short gray days: sombre and bitter cold. Our folk fled to the tilts at the Lodge; and we were left alone with the maids and Timmie Lovejoy in my father’s house: but had no idle times, for the doctor would not hear of it, but kept us at work or play, without regard for our wishes in the matter. ’Twas the doctor’s delight by day to don his new skin clothes (which my sister had finished in haste after the first fall of snow) and with help of Timmie Lovejoy to manage the dogs and komatik, flying here and there at top speed, with many a shout and crack of the long whip. By night he kept school in the kitchen, which we must all diligently attend, even to the maids: a profitable occupation, no doubt, but laborious, to say the least of it, though made tolerable by his good humour. By and by there came a call from Blister Harbour, which was forty miles to the north of us, where a man had shot off his hand—another from Red Cove, eighty miles to the south—others from Backwater Arm and Molly’s Tub. And the doctor responded, afoot or with the dogs, as seemed best at the moment: myself to bear him company; for I would have it so, and he was nothing loath.