"Oh, any time you want to see Ted I guess he can be let off early," cried both Mr. Fernald and Mr. Clarence in one breath.
Then as Mr. Clarence pushed the wheel-chair farther into the dusk of the pines, Mr. Fernald turned toward Ted and added in an undertone:
"It's done the lad good to come. I haven't seen him in such high spirits for days. We'll fix things up with Wharton so that whenever he fancies to come here you can be on hand. The poor boy hasn't many pleasures and he sees few persons of his own age."
CHAPTER VII
MR. LAURIE
The visits of Laurie during the following two weeks became very frequent; and such pleasure did they afford him that orders were issued for Ted Turner to knock off work each day at four o'clock and return to the shack, where almost invariably he found his new acquaintance awaiting him. It was long since Laurie Fernald had had a person of his own age to talk with. In fact, he had never before seen a lad whose friendship he desired. Most boys were so well and strong that they had no conception of what it meant not to be so, and their very robustness and vitality overwhelmed a personality as sensitively attuned as was that of Laurie Fernald. He shrank from their pity, their blundering sympathy, their patronage.
But in Ted Turner he immediately felt he had nothing to dread. He might have been a Marathon athlete, so far as any hint to the contrary went. Ted appeared never to notice his disability or to be conscious of any difference in their physical equipment; and when, as sometimes happened, he stooped to arrange a pillow, or lift the wheel-chair over the threshold, he did it so gently and yet in such a matter-of-fact manner that one scarcely noticed it. They were simply eager, alert, bubbling, interested boys together, and as the effect of the friendship showed itself in Laurie's shining eyes, all the Fernalds encouraged it.
"Why, that young Turner is doing Laurie more good than a dozen doctors!" asserted Grandfather Fernald. "If he did no work on the farm at all, Ted would be worth his wages. Money can't pay for what he has done already. I'm afraid Laurie has been missing young friends more than we realized. He never complains and perhaps we did not suspect how lonely he was."
Mr. Clarence nodded.