"I have come to live with you, sir," he said.
"Indeed," laughed the doctor; "and what do you suppose I want of you?"
"I don't know, sir; but my feyther always told me, if he died, I was not to stay on the mountain, but go to some good man who would teach me to work."
"And how do you know I am a good man?" asked the doctor, looking keenly at the boy. "You have never seen me but once."
"I have seen you often. I saw you when you mended the rabbit's leg. Jock Riley broke it with his big cart-whip."
"And where were you, pray?"
"Up in a tree, lying along a limb. And I was in the big tamarack when you climbed up the hill for the little flower. I often wanted to know why you cared to get it. My feyther thought perhaps it was good for medicine; but when I told him you only took one, he said then he couldn't tell; it might be you were crazed."
The doctor laughed heartily. It was by no means the first time his passion for botanizing had been called a craze.
"Well, Conny," said he, "go into the house and get your breakfast, and when I come back we will talk this matter over."
He stopped for a word of explanation with his wife, and drove away, leaving Conny on the door-step, with a substantial slice of bread and meat in his hands, and a bowl of milk beside him, while little Betty peeped shyly at him through the window.