“Stiff as a starfish!” cried Pluggs the grocer, who had spent his last holidays at the seaside.
“Ay, and colder than a skinned eel!” added Jakes, the barrowman.
But my uncle said—“Out with you, coward lot of curs! Our Kit shall outlive every one of you. The Lord hath not put him in that nest for nothing.”
Then Sam Henderson pulled off his cloak, like the Good Samaritan, and threw it over me. And taking me by the shoulders, with my uncle at the feet, he helped to bear my stiff body back to the road; where they set me upon Haro, with my head upon his mane; and the young man who had jumped into the drift was sent ahead, to fetch Dr. Sippets to my uncle’s house.
CHAPTER XXV.
ON THE SHELF.
That season, there was no Christmas-tide for me; no “Happy New Year,” to wish to others, and be wished; nor even so much as a Valentine’s Day, to send poems to girls, and get caricatures. In the leeward of the wild storm, I had been saved by a merciful power from the frost of death, and by constant care and indefatigable skill, I was slowly brought back into the warmth of life. But strong as I was, and of tough and active frame, with habits of temperance and exercise, there was no making little of the mischief done; and I could not have survived it, if I had been a clever fellow. For one of the most racking and deadly evils of all that beset the human frame was established in mine, and there worked its savage will. When I was just beginning to get warm again, and to ask where I was, and to stretch my tingling joints, symptoms of rheumatic fever showed, and for weeks and for months it ran its agonizing course. The doctor did all that any man could do; and my uncle went up to his cupboard in the wall by the head of his bed, and brought down a leather bag, and looked at it fondly, and then looked at me.
“It was put by for a rainy day; and there can’t be a rainier day than this,” he said with some drops in his own eyes, as Tabby told me afterwards. “Let the business go to the dogs, if it will. Where’s the use of keeping up, with no one to keep up for? Dr. Sippets, I never thought to see this day. Fetch the best man in London, and let him cheat me, if he will.”
If I had been at all a clever fellow, my mind would have stayed with me, and worried out my heart, when dreadfully pushed to carry on its proper work, with the lowering and the heightening, and the quivering of the pulse. But being just a simple mind, that took its cue from body, and depended on the brain for motion, and the eyes for guidance, when these went amiss it quite struck work; and never even asked who its master was. Thus it came to pass that Kitty’s sweet and tender letters lay upon a shelf but a yard or two away, and no hand was yet stretched out for them.
At last there came a letter sent in special trouble, as was plain from many signs upon it, and from the mode of its delivery. For Mrs. Wilcox came herself, the roads being once more passable, and perceiving how things were in the house had a long talk with my uncle. This good woman, as I may have said, was much attached to Miss Fairthorn, and had promised to take charge of my replies, and even to give me tidings of her, if anything happened to disable her from writing. But no provision had been made for any default on my part, as I was supposed to be free, and strong, and sure to come when called for.