But Mrs. Richie was herself again; she laughed, though not quite naturally, and sat down in the swing, swaying slightly back and forth with an indolent push of her pretty foot. David lounged against her knee, eying the doctor with frank displeasure. "I am sure," she said, "I wish Sam would attend to his ledgers; it would be much better than making visits."

"Dr. King," David said, gently, "I'll shake hands now, and say good- by."

The laugh that followed changed the subject, although warm in William's consciousness the thought remained that she had let him know what the subject meant to her: he shared a secret with her! She had told him, indirectly perhaps, but still told him, of her troubles with young Sam. It was as if she had put out her hand and said, "Help me!"

Inarticulately he felt what David had said, "I'll take care of you!"

And his first care must be to make her forget what had distressed her.

He said with the air of one imparting interesting information, that some time in the next fortnight he would probably go to Philadelphia on business. "Can I do any errands for you? Don't you ladies always want ribbons, or something."

"Does Mrs. King let you buy ribbons for her?" Helena asked.

"Ribbons! I am to buy yarn, and some particular brand of lye for soap."

"Lye! How do you make soap out of lye?"

"You save all the "--William hesitated for a sufficiently delicate word--"the--fat, you know, in the kitchen, and then you make soft soap."

"Why! I didn't know that was how soap was made."

"I'm glad you didn't," said William King. "I mean--it's disagreeable,"

he ended weakly. And then, to David's open joy, he said good-by and jogged off down the hill, leaving Mrs. Richie to her new responsibilities of discipline.

"Now, David, come here. I've got to scold you."

David promptly climbed up into the swing and settled himself in her lap. Then he snuggled his little nose down into her neck. "I'm a bear," he announced. "I'm eating you. Now, you scream and I'll roar."

"Oh, David, you little monkey! Listen to me: you weren't very polite to Dr. King."

"O-o-o-o-o-o!" roared the bear.

"You should make him feel you were glad to see him."

"I wasn't," mumbled David.

"But you must have manners, dear little boy."

"I have," David defended himself, sitting up straight. "I have them in my head; but I only use them sometimes."

Upon which the disciplinarian collapsed; "You rogue!" she said; "come here, and I'll give you 'forty kisses'!"

David was instantly silent; he shrank away, lifting his shoulder against his cheek and looking at her shyly. "I won't, dear!" she rea.s.sured him, impetuously: "truly I won't."

But she said to herself she must remember to repeat the speech about manners to the doctor; it would make him laugh.

William laughed easily when he came to the Stuffed Animal House.

Indeed, he had laughed when he went away from it, and stopped for a minute at Dr. Lavendar's to tell him that Mrs. Richie was just as anxious as anybody that Sam Wright should attend to his business.

"_Business_!" said the doctor, "much she knows about it!" And then he added that he was sure she would do her part to influence the boy to be more industrious. "And you may depend on it, she won't allow any love-making," said William.

He laughed again suddenly, out loud, as he ate his supper that night, because some memory of the after-noon came into his head. When Martha, starting at the unusual sound, asked what he was laughing at, he told her he had found Mrs. Richie playing with David Allison. "They were like two children; I said I didn't know which was the younger. They were pretending they were shipwrecked; the swing was the vessel, if you please!"

"I suppose she was trying to amuse him," Mrs. King said. "That's a great mistake with children. Give a child a book, or put him down to some useful task; that's my idea."

"Oh, she was amusing herself," William explained. Mrs. King was silent.

"She gets up for breakfast now, on account of David; it's evidently a great undertaking!" the doctor said humorously.

Martha held her lips hard together.

"You ought to hear her housekeeping ideas," William rambled on. "I happened to say you wanted some lye for soap. She didn't know soap was made with lye! You would have laughed to hear her--"

But at that the leash broke: "_Laughed_? I hope not! I hope I wouldn't laugh because a woman of her age has no more sense than a child. And she gets up for breakfast, does she? Well, why shouldn't she get up for breakfast? I am very tired, but I get up for breakfast. I don't mean to be severe, William, and I never am; I'm only just. But I must say, flatly and frankly, that ignorance and laziness do not seem _funny_ to me. Laugh? Would you laugh if I stayed in bed in the mornings, and didn't know how to make soap, and save your money for you? I guess not!"

The doctor's face reddened and he closed his lips with a snap. But Martha found no more fault with Mrs. Richie. After a while she said in that virtuous voice familiar to husbands, "William, I know you don't like to do it, so I cleaned all the medicine-shelves in your office this morning."

"Thank you," William said, curtly; and finished his supper in absolute silence.

CHAPTER XIII

Dr. Lavendar was not sleeping very well that spring. He fell into the habit of waking at about three, just when the birds begin the scattered twittering that swells into full clamor and then dies suddenly into silence. In that gray stillness, broken by bird-calls, he used to occupy himself by thinking of his people.

"The name of the large upper chamber, facing the east, was Peace." And so this old pilgrim found it, lying in his four-poster, listening to the cries and calls in the jargonelle pear-tree in the corner of the garden, and watching the ghostly oblong of the window that faced the east, glimmer and brighten into the effulgence of day. It was then, with his old hands folded on his breast, that he thought about the Wrights--all three of them....

It was a relief to know that Mrs. Richie would influence Sam to put his mind on his work; if the boy would do that, his father would be less irritated with him. And William's a.s.surance that she would not allow any love-making ought to end his grandfather's worry. But while that worry lasted it must be utilized....

The room was slipping out of the shadows. Dr. Lavendar could see the outline of the window distinctly. The bureau loomed up in the grayness like a rock; opposite the bed, under a high wooden mantel was the cavernous blackness of the chimney, Dr. Lavendar reflected that it must be nearly four....

The question was, when should he use this weapon of Benjamin Wright's worry, on the two hard hearts? He had made several attempts to use it, only to feel the blade turn in his hand: He had asked Mr. Wright when he was going to talk things over with Samuel, and the old man had instantly declared that he had changed his mind. He had mentioned to his senior warden that Benjamin was troubled about his grandson's sheep's-eyes, and Samuel's studied deafness had put an end to conversation. So Dr. Lavendar had made up his mind that a matter of this kind cannot be forced. A thirty-two-year-old wound is not to be healed in a day. He took any chance that offered to drop a suggestive word; but he did not try to hurry his Heavenly Father. For it was Dr.

Lavendar's belief that G.o.d was more anxious about that reconciliation than he was....

A line of light threaded its way under the window-curtain, and fell in a spot of fluid gold upon the mirror. He watched it move silently across the powdery surface: suddenly another dimpling pool appeared on the soot of the chimney-back, and his eye followed the tremulous beam to its entrance over the top of the shutter. The birds were shouting now in full voice. How fond Benjamin was of his poor caged creatures.

Well, he had so little else to be fond of; "and I have so much,"

thought Dr. Lavendar, shamefacedly;--"all my people. And David, the rascal!" Then he chuckled; Dr. Lavendar was under the delusion that he was unprejudiced in regard to David: "a very unusual child!" he a.s.sured himself, gravely. No wonder Mrs. Richie liked to have him.-- And he would be the making of her! he would shake her out of her selfishness. "Poor girl, I guess, by the way she talks, she has never known anything but self. David will wake her up. But I've got to look out that she doesn't spoil him." It was this belief of what David might do for Mrs. Richie that had reconciled him to parting with the little boy.

His eyes wandered to the window; a glittering strip of green light between the bowed shutters meant that the sun was in the trees. Yes; to be sure, for the birds had suddenly stopped singing.

Dr. Lavendar yawned and looked at his watch; five o'clock. He would have liked to get up, but Mary would be worried if she knew he was awake so long before breakfast. Well; he must try to have a nap, no, the room was too light for that. He could see all the furniture; he could count the pleats in the sun-burst of the tester; he could, perhaps, see to read? He put his hand out for _Robinson Crusoe_, and after that he possessed his soul in patience until he knew that Mary would allow him to come down-stairs.

It was in one of those peaceful dawns early in June that he decided that the moment had come to strike a decisive blow: he would go and talk to Benjamin of Sam's Sam, and though truth demanded that he should report Mrs. Richie's good sense he did not mean to insist upon it too much; Benjamin's anxiety was the Lord's opportunity--so Dr.

Lavendar thought. He would admit Sam's sentimentality and urge putting the matter before his father. Then he would pin Benjamin down to a date. That secured, he would present a definite proposal to Samuel.

"He is the lion in the way," he told himself anxiously; "I am pretty sure I can manage Benjamin." Yet surely if he could only put it properly to Samuel, if he could express the pitiful trouble in the old father's soul, the senior warden's heart would soften. "It must touch him!" Dr. Lavendar thought, and closed his eyes for a moment....

When he said _Amen_, the bird-calls were like flutes of triumph.

On his way up the hill that morning, he paused under a great chestnut to talk to David Allison, who, a strapful of books over his shoulder, was running down the path to school. David was willing to be detained; he pulled some gra.s.s for Goliath and told Dr. Lavendar that Mrs.

Richie had bought him a pair of suspenders. "And I said a bad word yesterday," he ended proudly.