"Cheer up, Pop!" he cried. "See! Everything'll come right now. I've found a horseshoe."
Poor Mr. Tucker turned to look at it with a sickly sort of smile, but the hope that illumined his boy's face lent a feeble glow to his own.
"Heaven bless the boy!" he said. "I'm very weak, I suppose. But hang it up where I can see it."
Mother Tucker fastened it to a beam over the foot of the bed, having the good cry over it she'd been longing for, and out Tommy ran to see to the live stock.
He rubbed that horse into such a glow that before he left him the wheeze in his windpipe wasn't worth mentioning, and he held his head and legs up in the style of Mr. Crœsus' steed; then he fed the cow, and drove the hens around to the manure heap, where they could keep warm in the steaming side next the sun; and while he was hard at work he heard a terrible racket up the road, and he thought it must be Mr. Crœsus himself shouting and screaming for dear life, while his charger was flying along on the wings of the wind. Tommy dropped his pitchfork, and got there just in time to feel the hot breath from the runaway's nostrils, and make a spring for the bridle. They all went plunging along together a bit, then came to a stand-still, trembling all over, all of them. What was Tommy's delight to find that instead of Mr. Crœsus, it was only their old doctor! He trembled more than his horse, and puffed like a grampus.
"Well done, sonny," he said. "I might have been in a worse plight than your father, if it hadn't been for you. My horse never cut up such a tantrum before."
Tommy knew what it was; it was the horseshoe. Something had to be done to soften that doctor's heart. Tommy plucked up courage to beg of him to take no more music from his mother's stocking, seeing it was away down to the toe.
"Why, no, sonny," said the doctor; "I'll take none out, but I'll put some in."
After that scare with the horse, nothing would do but Tommy must go around with the doctor to take care of it, and the doctor made a bargain with Tommy that paid him handsomely for three or four hours every day.