But the result of the call was that at the end of the week Dr. King
went up to the Stuffed Animal House.
"We are shipwrecked!" cried Mrs. Richie, as she saw him coming down
the garden path towards the barn. Her face was flushed and gay, and
her hair, shaken from its shining wreath around her head, hung in two
braids down her back. She had had a swing put up under the big
buttonwood beside the stable, and David, climbing into it, had clung
to the rigging to be dashed, side wise, on to the rocks of the
carriageway, where Mrs. Richie stood ready to catch him when the
vessel should drive near enough to the shore. In an endeavor to save
himself from some engulfing sea which his playmate had pointed out to
him, David had clutched at her, breaking the top hook of her gown and
tearing her collar apart, leaving throat, white and round, open to the
hot sun. Before the doctor reached her, she caught her dress together,
and twisted her hair into a knot. "You can't keep things smooth in a
shipwreck," she excused herself, laughing.
David sighed, and looked into the carriage-house. In that jungle--Mrs.
Richie had called it a jungle--were wild beasts; there were also
crackers and apples--or to be exact, breadfruit and citrons--hanging
from what George called "harness-racks," though of course, as
thoughtful persons know, they were trees; David was to gather these
tropical spoils, and then escape from the leopard, the shark, the
crocodile! And now there was Dr. King, spoiling everything.
The doctor sat down on a keg and looked at the two, smiling. "Which is
the younger of you?" he said. It came over him, in a gust of
amusement, what Martha would say to such a scene, and he laughed
aloud.
"Dr. King," said David, in a small distinct voice, "won't Jinny run
away, if you leave her so long at gate?"
"Oh, David!" cried Mrs. Richie, horrified. But the visitor threw back
his head with a shout.
"That's what my wife would call speaking 'flatly and frankly'! Well,
Mrs. Richie, I never wrote a better prescription in my life. You look
like a different woman, already."
And, indeed, the youth in her face was as careless as David's own. But
it flagged when he added that he hoped her brother would not think the
care of David would be too much for her.
"Oh, no," she said, briefly.
"I feel like saying 'I told you so'! I knew you would like to have a
child about."