It was June when he first crawled down the narrow stairs and took the Boy’s seat in the sunny porch, near which his dinner was spread by Aunt Louisa, who bustled about him affectionately, trying by gesture, as well as by written words, to raise his curiosity to the point of questioning how they were managing without him.
Every few days the Boy came with the doctor, now bringing him some little thing that he had made, or a bunch of wayside flowers. One day he brought a knot of white musk roses fastened together with grass. The Man caught at them eagerly, for such grew in the old garden at Eileen’s. Burying his nose in them, their fragrance penetrated the awakening sense, the same moment that a high-pitched peal of the Boy’s laughter, as he made the young dogs do their tricks, reached his ears. Ah! blessed Mother Nature, who had day and night been knitting, knitting, to rejoin the severed nerves and tissues that they might carry the messages to the brain once more!
Strawberries were ripe and passing, and the blush rose on the kitchen porch was shedding its satin petals when the Man said abruptly to father, who had this day come without the Boy: “When may Asa come home, Dr. Russell? It is a shame to trouble your daughter any longer, and besides, I need his company. I’ve been over the farm to-day, and to-morrow I shall go outside to the wagon shop; yes, to-morrow I must take up life again.”
“Trouble my daughter—Mrs. Evan?” stammered the doctor, as though taken by surprise. “Why—oh, yes, to be sure, I’ll bring him over to-morrow, and perhaps I can persuade his foster-mother to come, too, and render an account of him.”
But on the morrow, the Man did not go to the wagon shop as he had said; the day was sultry, and showers threatened, so he wandered down “cross lots” until he met the trout stream, and quite unconsciously followed it until he came upon the group of old willows, under whose shade the old Eileen had vanished.
It was not until he had almost reached the trees that he noticed there were people there, picnickers, probably, yet something led him to pause and look again. Surely, it was the Boy lying upon the grass, with eager upturned face, listening to some one who was evidently reading aloud; but though figure and book were in sight, foliage concealed the face. Another step, and he saw that the reader was Eileen.