Doctor Wainwright was an easy-going as well as a hopeful sort of man, but he was an honest person, and he knew that creditors have a right to be insistent. It distressed him to drag around a load of debt. For days together the poor doctor had driven a long way round rather than to pass Potter's store on the main street, the dread of some such encounter and the shame of his position weighing heavily on his soul. It was the harder for him that he had made it a rule never to appear anxious before his wife. Mrs. Wainwright had enough to bear in being ill and in pain. The doctor braced himself and threw back his shoulders as if casting off a load, as the mare, of her own accord, stopped at the door.
The house was full of light. Merry voices overflowed in rippling speech and laughter. Out swarmed the children to meet papa, and one sweet girl kissed him over and over. "Here I am," she said, "your middle daughter, dearest. Here I am."
[to be continued.]
[A SURE CURE.]
Poor Bobby's sick! Dear little lad,
He's got a pain; it hurts him awful bad.
Just see his face!
In every line of it a trace
Of how he suffers from that pain.
What's that? His plate is back again
For buckwheat cakes? Oho, I see!
'Tis nearly nine o'clock. Ho!—hum!—tell me
What is this woe
That lays poor Bobby low
Each morning just at school-time, yet so fleet is?
Is it the olden time Nineoelockitis
That as a boy I had so frequently?
That comes at half past eight, and seems to last
From then till nine, or say a quarter past,
And then departs, and leaves him all the day
With twice the strength with which to go and play?
Oh—well—if this be so
I'll worry not. The symptoms well I know.
Only, instead of cakes to cure his ills,
Take him a spoon and fill it up with squills,
And by to-morrow
I doubt he'll suffer from his present sorrow.