Part 30 (2/2)

Sammy shook his head.

”No? But it hurts a good deal, sometimes, does it not? That's too bad.

That's very sad, indeed. But, perhaps--perhaps, Sammy--I can cure it for you, if you are brave. And are you brave? No? Oh, I think you are. And you'll try to be, at any rate, won't you? Of course! That's a good boy.”

And so, with his sharp little knives, the doctor cured Sammy Jutt's knee, while the lad lay white and still on the kitchen table. And 'twas not hard to do; but had not the doctor chanced that way, Sammy Jutt would have been a cripple all his life.

”Doctor, zur,” said Matilda Jutt, when the children were put to bed, with Martha to watch by Sammy, who was still very sick, ”is you really got a bottle o' Pine's Prompt?”

The doctor laughed. ”An empty bottle,” said he. ”I picked it up at Poverty Cove. Thought it might come useful. I'll put Sammy's medicine in that. They'll not know the difference. And you'll treat the knee with it as I've told you. That's all. We must turn in at once; for we must be gone before the children wake in the morning.”

”Oh, ay, zur; an'----” she began: but hesitated, much embarra.s.sed.

”Well?” the doctor asked, with a smile.

”Would you mind puttin' some queer lookin' stuff in one o' they bottles o' yours?”

”Not in the least,” in surprise.

”An' writin' something on a bit o' paper,” she went on, pulling at her ap.r.o.n, and looking down, ”an' gluin' it t' the bottle?”

”Not at all. But what shall I write?”

She flushed. ”'Magic Egyptian Beautifier,' zur,” she answered; ”for I'm thinkin' 'twould please little Sammy t' think that Sandy Claws left something--for me--too.”

If you think that the three little Jutts found nothing but bottles of medicine in their stockings, when they got down-stairs on Christmas morning, you are very much mistaken. Indeed, there was much more than that--a great deal more than that. I will not tell you what it was; for you might sniff, and say, ”Huh! That's little enough!” But there _was_ more than medicine. No man--rich man, poor man, beggarman nor thief, doctor, lawyer nor merchant chief--ever yet left a Hudson's Bay Company's post, stared in the face by the chance of having to seek hospitality of a Christmas Eve--no right-feeling man, I say, ever yet left a Hudson's Bay Company's post, under such circ.u.mstances, without putting something more than medicine in his pack. I chance to know, at any rate, that upon this occasion Doctor Luke did not. And I know, too--you may be interested to learn it--that as we floundered through the deep snow, homeward bound, soon after dawn, the next day, he was glad enough that he hadn't. No merry shouts came over the white miles from the cottage of Jonas Jutt, though I am sure that they rang there most heartily; but the doctor did not care: he shouted merrily enough for himself, for he was very happy. And that's the way _you'd_ feel, too, if you spent _your_ days hunting good deeds to do.

XXI

DOWN NORTH

When, in my father's house, that night, the Christmas revel was over--when, last of all, in noisy glee, we had cleared the broad kitchen floor for Sir Roger De Coverly, which we danced with the help of the maids' two swains and Skipper Tommy Lovejoy and Jacky, who had come out from the Lodge for the occasion (all being done to the tune of ”Money Musk,” mercilessly wrung from an ancient accordion by Timmie Lovejoy)--when, after that, we had all gathered before the great blaze in the best room, we told no tales, such as we had planned to tell, but soon fell to staring at the fire, each dreaming his own dreams.

It may be that my thoughts changed with the dying blaze--pa.s.sing from merry fancies to gray visions, trooping out of the recent weeks, of cold and hunger and squalid death in the places from which we had returned.

”Davy!” said my sister.

I started.

”What in the world,” she asked, ”is you thinkin' so dolefully of?”

”I been thinkin',” I answered, sighing, ”o' the folk down narth.”

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