The winter days grew short, then longer; Van waxed in greatness and importance on the Hill-Top, and then, one Saturday morning he had an experience that opened up new vistas. He, too, began his Grammar School.
Dr. Peters came over, looking as if he had something on his mind—something special.
“Miss Betsy,” he said, “Dr. Johns thinks Van is old enough to try on Ward M. There are some rats in the yard there that we cannot get rid of.”
Betsy gave her consent rather reluctantly. Catching mice off one’s own vine and fig tree is one thing, but being loaned out as a common rat-catcher is another, and a bit beneath the dignity of a Prince of the Blood.
Van himself had no such scruples. He went joyfully, with a feeling that something unusual was about to happen, and whatever it might be, he would be the boy for it.
The yard on Ward M. was surrounded on three sides by buildings, underneath which the rats had burrowed and made fortresses for themselves. No one could get at them without tearing down the foundations of the Hospital. This was the yard where certain patients took their airing, and the rats had become a pest and a nuisance.
Dr. Peters had a great scheme all planned out, by means of which he hoped to make a clean sweep of the enemy. There were to be three principal actors—Van, the Fire-Hose and Himself. The other doctors, six of them, came out and stood around and got in the way, in the hope that they might help a little, and at all events, see the fun. They were like a lot of overgrown boys. Van felt that he was in first-rate company, and pranced around proudly, feeling from the glances they cast upon him, and the words with which they cheered him on, that, whatever was about to happen, he was looked upon as the star performer.
The curtain went up when Dr. Peters fastened the fire-hose to the hydrant, and the fire-hose opened the melodrama with a great swish and swirl. As the water filled it, it flapped and writhed across the yard like a great boa-constrictor.
“Look out there! The water’s coming pretty strong!”
The fat young doctor spoke too late. Dr. Peters missed his cue, and the nozzle was jerked out of his hand by the rushing stream of water. The hose capered around the enclosure, and tied itself up into bow-knots, as if it were the historical sea-serpent in captivity. It pointed its nozzle straight at a black-bearded young doctor, doubled him up, put a crease in him, and left him gasping and soaked. Then it turned its attention to Dr. Peters, who was jumping like a chestnut on a hot shovel, trying to get another grip without being washed off the face of the earth. All the other doctors scrambled off into safe corners, and shouted directions to everybody, which nobody heard. Van barked and tried to seize the wriggling hose, but only succeeded in adding to the general tumult. At last the fat young doctor turned off the water at the hydrant, Dr. Peters mopped his brow, the black-bearded young doctor wrung the water out of his coat-tails, and the show went on into the second act.