"Why, of course! I suppose he will have to go every morning?" she
added ruefully.
"My," Maggie said smiling, "you're wan that ought to have six!"
Mrs. Richie smiled, too. Then she said to herself that she wouldn't
let him go to school every day; she was sure he was not strong enough.
She ventured something like this to Dr. Lavendar when, about four
o'clock, Goliath and the buggy finally appeared.
"Strong enough?" said Dr. Lavendar. "He's strong enough to study a
great deal harder than he does, the little rascal! I'm afraid Rose
Knight will spoil him; she's almost as bad as Ellen Bailey. You didn't
know our Ellen, did ye? No; she'd married Spangler and gone out West
before you came to us. Ah, a dear woman, but wickedly unselfish. Rose
Knight took the school when Spangler took Ellen." Then he added one or
two straight directions: Every school-day David was to come to the
Rectory for his dinner, and to Collect Class on Saturdays. "You will
have to keep him at his catechism," said Dr. Lavendar; "he is weak on
the long answers."
"Oh!" Helena said, rather startled; "you don't want me to teach him--
things like that, do you?"
"Things like what?"
"The catechism, and--to pray, and--"
Dr. Lavendar smiled. "You can teach folks to say their prayers, my
dear, but nobody can teach them to pray. Only life does that. But
David's been taught his prayers; you just let him say 'em at your
knee, that's all"
David, dismissed to the garden while his elders talked, had discovered
the rabbit-hutch, and could hardly tear himself away from it to say
good-by. But when Dr. Lavendar called out that he was going, the
little boy's heart misgave him. He came and stood by the step of the
buggy, and picked with nervous fingers at the dry mud on the wheel--
for Dr. Lavendar's buggy was not as clean as it should have been.
"Well, David?" Dr. Lavendar said cheerfully. The child with his chin
sunk on his breast said something. "What?" said Dr. Lavendar.
David mumbled a word or two in a voice that seemed to come from his
stomach; it sounded like, "Like you best." But Dr. Lavendar did not
hear it, and David ran swiftly back to the rabbits. There Helena found
him, gazing through two large tears at the opal-eyed pair behind the
wooden bars. Their white shell-like ears wavered at her step, and they
paused in their nibbling; then went on again with timid, jewel-like
glances in her direction.