Dan sat down in the chair as he spoke, and his sister Jessie, who entered at the moment, pushed him all about the room with the greatest ease.
“Well, well!” said the amused invalid. “Ye are a clever man, Taniel. It iss a goot contrivance, an’ seems to me fery well made. Could Little Bill push it, think ye? Go an’ try, boy.”
Little Bill found that he could push Dan in the chair as easily as Jessie had done it.
“But that is not all,” said Dan. “See—now I will work the chair myself.”
So saying he laid his hands on the two large wheels at either side—which, with a little wheel behind, supported the machine—and moved it about the room, turned it round, and, in short, acted in a very independent manner as to self-locomotion.
“Well, now, that iss goot,” exclaimed the pleased invalid. “Let me try it, Tan.”
In his eagerness the poor man, forgetting for a moment his helpless condition, made an effort to rise, and would certainly have fallen off the chair on which he was seated if Elspie had not sprung to his assistance.
“Come, there’s life in you yet!” said Dan as he assisted the old man into the wheel-chair. “Put your hands—so. And when you want to turn sharp round you’ve only to pull with one hand and push with—”
“Get along with you,” interrupted the old man, facetiously giving the chair a swing that caused all who stood around him to leap out of his way: “will you hev the presumption to teach a man that knew how to scull a boat before you wass born? But, Taniel,” he added, in a more serious tone, “we must hev one like this made for poor Tuncan.”
As this was the first reference which McKay had made to his younger son since his illness—with the exception of the daily inquiry as to his health—it was hailed as an evidence that a change for the better was taking place in the old man’s mind. For up to that period no one had received any encouragement to speak of, or enter into conversation about, Duncan junior.