Doctor Luke of the Labrador by Norman Duncan (color ebook reader .txt) 📖

errand appeared to be really most trivial--and stayed so long that the little Jutts, who now loved him very much (as I could see), wished that the need would not arise again. But, all in good time, he returned, and sat to watch for the reply, intent as any of them; and, presently, he snatched the stove door open, creating great confusion in the act, as before; and before the little Jutts could recover from the sudden surprise, he held up a smoking letter. Then he read aloud:


"Try Hamilton Inlet. Touches there 10:48. Time of arrival at Topmast
Tickle uncertain. No use waiting up.
SNOW, Clerk."


"By Jove!" exclaimed the doctor. "That's jolly! Touches Hamilton Inlet at 10:48." He consulted his watch. "It's now 10:43 and a half. We've just four and a half minutes. I'll get a message off at once. Where's that confounded pen? Ha! Here we are. Now--what is it you want for Sammy and mama?"

The three little Jutts were suddenly thrown into a fearful state of excitement. They tried to talk all at once; but not one of them could frame a coherent sentence. It was most distressful to see.

"The Exterminator!" Martha managed to jerk out, at last.

"Oh, ay!" cried Jimmie Jutt. "Quick, zur! Write un down. Pine's Prompt Pain Exterminator. Warranted to cure. Please, zur, make haste."

The doctor stared at Jimmie.

"Oh, zur," groaned Martha, "don't be starin' like that! Write, zur! 'Twas all in the paper the prospector left last summer. Pine's Prompt Pain Exterminator. Cures boils, rheumatism, pains in the back an' chest, sore throat, an' all they things, an' warts on the hands by a simple application with brown paper. We wants it for the rheumatiz, zur. Oh, zur----"

"None genuine without the label," Jimmie put in, in an excited rattle. "Money refunded if no cure. Get a bottle with the label."

The doctor laughed--laughed aloud, and laughed again. "By Jove!" he roared, "you'll get it. It's odd, but--ha, ha!--by Jove, he has it in stock!"

The laughter and repeated assurance seemed vastly to encourage Jimmie and Martha--the doctor wrote like mad while he talked--but not little Sammy. All that he lisped, all that he shouted, all that he screamed, had gone unheeded. As though unable to put up with the neglect any longer, he limped over the floor to Martha, and tugged her sleeve, and pulled at Jimmie's coat-tail, and jogged the doctor's arm, until, at last, he attracted a measure of attention. Notwithstanding his mother's protests--notwithstanding her giggles and waving hands--notwithstanding that she blushed as red as ink (until, as I perceived, her freckles were all lost to sight)--notwithstanding that she threw her apron over her head and rushed headlong from the room, to the imminent danger of the door-posts--little Sammy insisted that his mother's gift should be named in the letter of request.

"Quick!" cried the doctor. "What is it? We've but half a minute left."

Sammy began to stutter.

"Make haste, b'y!" cried Jimmie.

"One--bottle--of--the--Magic--Egyptian--Beautifier," said Sammy, quite distinctly for the first time in his life.

The doctor looked blank; but he doggedly nodded his head, nevertheless, and wrote it down; and off went the letter at precisely 10:47.45, as the doctor said.

* * * * *


Later--when the excitement had all subsided and we sat dreaming in the warmth and glow--the doctor took little Sammy in his lap, and told him he was a very good boy, and looked deep in his eyes, and stroked his hair, and, at last, very tenderly bared his knee. Sammy flinched at that; and he said "Ouch!" once, and screwed up his face, when the doctor--his gruffness all gone, his eyes gentle and sad, his hand as light as a mother's--worked the joint, and felt the knee-cap and socket with the tips of his fingers.

"And is this the rheumatiz the Prompt Exterminator is to cure, Sammy?" he asked.

"Ith, zur."

"Ah, is _that_ where it hurts you? Right on the point of the bone, there?"

"Ith, zur."

"And was there no fall on the rock, at all? Oh, there _was_ a fall? And the bruise was just there--where it hurts so much? And it's very hard to bear, isn't it?"

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 embarrassed.

"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 apron, 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 circumstances, 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--passing 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."

"Of the man at Runner's Woe?" the doctor asked.

"No, zur. He on'y done murder. 'Twas not o' he. 'Twas o' something sadder than that."

"Then 'tis too sad to tell," he said.

"No," I insisted. "'Twould do well-fed folk good t' hear it."

"What was it?" my sister asked.

"I was thinkin'----"

Ah, but '_twas_ too sad!

"O' what?"

"O' the child at Comfort Harbour, Bessie, that starved in his mother's arms."

Timmie Lovejoy threw more billets on the fire. They flamed and spluttered and filled the room with cheerful light.

"Davy," said the doctor, "we can never cure the wretchedness of this coast."

"No, zur?"

"But we can try to mitigate it."

"We'll try," said I. "You an' me."

"You and I."

"And I," my sister said.

Lying between the sturdy little twins, that night--where by right of caste I lay, for it was the warmest place in the bed--I abandoned, once and for all, my old hope of sailing a schooner, with the decks awash.

"Timmie!" I whispered.

He was sound asleep. I gave him an impatient nudge in the ribs.

"Ay, Davy?" he asked.

"You may have my hundred-tonner," said I.

"What hundred-tonner?"

"The big fore-an'-after, Timmie, I'm t' have when I'm growed. You may skipper she. You'll not wreck her, Timmie, will you?"

He was asleep.

"Hut!" I thought, angrily. "I'll have Jacky skipper that craft, if Timmie don't look out."

At any rate, she was not to be for me.


XXII

The WAY From HEART'S DELIGHT

It chanced in the spring of that year that my sister and the doctor and I came unfortuitously into a situation of grave peril: wherein (as you shall know) the doctor was precipitate in declaring a sentiment, which, it may be, he should still have kept close within his heart, withholding it until a happier day. But for this there is some excuse: for not one of us hoped ever again to behold the rocks and placid water of our harbour, to continue the day's work to the timely close of the day, to sit in quiet places, to dream a fruitful future,