"Mebbe you'd know some place 'round here where I could do chores for my vittels, or p'r'aps you'd giv' me a job yourself, an then I'd git a look at this little creetur every day, sartin sure. 'Scuse me, marm, ef I make too free ('Titania' had crept close to Bottom and was fondly stroking his hand); but I kerried her in my arms a long spell, an' habit's second natur."
Peter's long story concluded, Miss Paulina kindly assured him that he should not yet be sent far away from his pretty nursling. Already, she had determined where to bestow him for the night. In the rambling old garden stood a small, nondescript erection, supposed to have served, in remote times, as a summer-house, and though now appropriated to the safe-keeping of garden tools, still weather-tight and easily convertible into a sleeping-place, for an unambitious guest. With this energetic lady, to will was to do. And, with the help of Reuben's strong arm, and the half-reluctant aid of Mandy Ann, who had consented to leave for a time the sheltering four walls of her attic bedroom, the tool-house was cleared up and made clean. A light cot-bed was conveyed hither, and duly furnished for Peter's occupancy, and, with his last lingering look devouring May-blossom, he was escorted by Reuben to his new quarters. There, a cup of hot coffee, a generous plate of biscuits, and a clean nightcap awaited him. And, installed in these comparatively elegant lodgings, we leave him to sound sleep, and happy dreams.
Harmy's pet bantam had long since crowed in a new day, and Harmy herself had been two full hours astir, when Peter Floome, rubbing his old eyes, awoke from untroubled slumber. Essaying to rise, and with one foot already planted on the floor, he becomes painfully aware of his inability to do so. A small, round table, the summer-house settee, and chairs reel tipsily in their places. The diamond-paned window wavers before his eyes, the very walls of the apartment seem like—
"The ancient House of Usher,
Tottering to their fall,"
and, catching the general impulse, he, too, lets go his centre of gravity, and falls fainting across the bed. Half an hour later, Peter awakes to conscious life, and an overwhelming smell of camphor. Harmy Patterson, not without evidence of strong repulsion, bends desperately over him. Her expression, in the main, is that of solemn determination. She is "bringing him to." This accomplished, she stiffly beckons to Reuben (who stands "watching afar off"), and, signifying her desire to wash her hands of this disreputable patient, commits Peter to his care, and grimly retires.
Miss Paulina is hastily interviewed, and informed of the convict's "faint spell," and his subsequent "bringin' to." And Harmy, forthwith, expresses her decided conviction that "it's ketchin', an' she shouldn't a bit wonder if the hull family was took down with it," and, furtively suggesting the "poorhouse," she withdraws to the more momentous concerns of her kitchen. There she sends cold shivers down Mandy Ann's back, by a recountal of the late occurrence. "I hain't," she declares, "had a wink of sleep the whole blessed night, a thinkin' of that horrid convict, an' not knowin' what might happen, with sich creeturs 'round. At four o'clock I come down and went into the garden to settle my mind, an' pull a few cherry reddishes for breakfast. I jest stepped down to the summer-house a minute, to take a good look 'round, and there was the door wide open!"
Feelin' (as she averred) in her bones that the creetur might ha' gone off in the night with the pillow-case and towels in his trowsers' pocket, she had (to make assurance doubly sure) stepped over the threshold, with them cherry reddishes in her apron, an' her heart a beatin' like a mill-clapper. And, raisin' her two hands, she had let go her apron, an' them reddishes had gone rollin' every which way, while she gin such a screech that Reuben heered it, way off in the cow-yard, and nigh about jumped out of his skin. The hired man arriving on the scene, she had said, "Reuben, is he gone?" and, loosing his shirt collar, Reuben had made answer, "Gone? no, he's alive an' kickin', you bet. Run git the camfire, Harmy, an' don't disturb the folks. You'll fetch him 'round ef ennybody kin." How her camfire, strong enough to bear up an egg, had at length brung the miser'ble creetur round, to give 'em all some dretful sickness he'd ketched, etc., etc.
Mandy Ann's fascinated attention, and her lively alternations of horror and surprise during the above recital, this feeble pen may not describe. Miss Paulina, meantime, visiting the summer-house, detects no evidence of fever in Peter's system, and is convinced that the poor body's ailment is not, as Harmy opines, "ketchin'." Kindly looking after his comfort, she relieves Reuben's watch, and forthwith despatches him for Doctor Foster, who in due time looks in upon the strange patient, and pronounces his sudden illness an attack of heart disease. "Twenty-two years of hopeless toil," declares the good doctor, "short commons, and vitiated air, have damaged the poor human machine beyond repair; and, though it may run a while longer, don't be surprised if it stops any day, and without notice." The doctor rides away on his morning round; Miss Paulina gives May-blossom her late breakfast, and, with many careful admonitions, allows her to go to Peter, who now—tolerably recovered—"is receiving" in an old Boston rocker, hunted up for his special use; and in which, sitting bolt upright, he rocks with indescribable relish, assuring May-blossom that "it's the very spawn o' mother's own rockin'-cheer, an' makes him feel as ef he was right in the old chimbly corner, to hum."
While Peter rocks and chats with his little visitor, the good lady of the house, turning over his affairs in her mind, thus soliloquises: "Poor creature, as Doctor Foster says, he'll not trouble any one long. He loves my precious child. Why should I part the two?—both, alas! going the same sad road. The summer-house could easily be made habitable. He could live there, quite by himself—at least till cold weather sets in. The cost of his maintenance I can well spare from my abundance. The neighbours, to be sure, will object; and there's Harmy to be reconciled; but what is to become of the forlorn, shelterless creature, if I turn my back on him? What indeed (with a resolute nod, and thinking aloud)! My mind is made up. He shall stay. Right is right. One is sure of that; and Providence takes care of the rest."
In accordance with this resolve, Peter Floome, that very day, goes to housekeeping. A Lilliputian laundry-stove, with an improvised flue, is set up in the summer-house by the tinman. An old cupboard, vis-à-vis with the stove, is scoured, and well stocked with provisions and cooking utensils, and a sufficiency of homely table and other furniture is placed at his disposal; and Peter literally groans under "an embarrassment of riches." A box of coal is also appropriated to his use, and, when he receives permission to chop for himself unlimited kindlings from Miss Paulina's teeming woodpile, tears of grateful joy trickle down the worn old cheeks of Peter Floome. From the luxurious depths of his Boston rocker, he watches dazedly these munificent preparations for his housekeeping, declaring over and over to May-blossom (who is in an equal state of delight), that "this does beat the Dutch, an' he never, an' it's jest like bein' took up by one o' them fairy godmothers in the story-book!" But when actually measured by the Saganock tailor, he is subsequently arrayed in a pair of trousers, cut with especial reference to his own clumsy legs, and a coat which, though coarse and homely, has not been fashioned without some slight reference to the dimensions of its wearer; a bran-new necktie, and a decent straw hat, not to mention a clean print shirt (of the latter, there is a magnificent reserve of five others, equally new and clean), his admiration and wonderment, and May-blossom's pride in him, are absolutely indescribable. Even Harmy herself, softened by this metamorphosis of the fairy godmother, becomes distantly amicable, scarcely recognising in this decent old body the objectionable being of her sometime suspicion and aversion. After the lapse of an entire week, she grimly remarks to Reuben that "she hain't missed nothin' yit, tho', to be sure, its awful resky havin' sich creeturs 'round."