“Not so bad,” answered Thomas. “Will th’ lashin’s hold, now?”
“And is she like t’ be straight and stout again when she heals?” asked Thomas anxiously.
“Straight and stout as ever she was,” promised Doctor Joe, “but you’ll have to lie still for a month or six weeks, and then you’ll be on crutches for a time. I’ll look after you, Tom.”
“And I can’t go to my trappin’ grounds, then, before th’ New Year, _what_ever?” Thomas asked anxiously.
“No--not before the New Year--whatever--nor after the New Year--not this winter--I’m afraid,” said Dr. Joe, reluctantly.
A shadow passed over Thomas’s face, but he said nothing.
“’Twere a blessin’ you were here t’ mend un,” said Tom.
“Yes,” agreed Doctor Joe, “it was well I was here to set it.”
“I wouldn’t mind so much if ’tweren’t for Jamie,” continued Thomas. “How, now, can we ever get th’ money t’ pay th’ lad’s way t’ have th’ great doctor cure him?”
But this was a question Doctor Joe could not answer, and he was sorely troubled.
“Pop,” said Jamie, who had come close to his father’s bed, “we’ll keep our grit, both of us, now.”
“Aye, lad, we’ll keep our grit, you and me,” and there was a choke in Thomas’s voice as he reached for Jamie’s hand, which Jamie gave him after passing it before his eyes in a vain effort to brush the mist away, which was a habit with him of late.
Doctor Joe’s usually jovial face had suddenly become drawn and tired. He had not answered Thomas’s question, “How, now, can we ever get th’ money t’ pay th’ lad’s way t’ have th’ great doctor cure him?” How, indeed, could they get the necessary money? What could they do to save Jamie’s eyes without money? And he was thinking of the years before he came to The Labrador--of what he had once been--of the years that he had spent on The Labrador as a hunter and fisherman. Had his life been wasted? he asked himself.
“We’re in a tight pinch, but hard luck is bound to come now and again,” said Thomas, at length, startling Doctor Joe out of his reveries, “and we’ll try not to worry about un. If ’tweren’t for Jamie’s eyes needin’ t’ be cured ’twouldn’t be so bad.”
“No, if ’tweren’t for Jamie’s eyes it wouldn’t be so bad. If ’tweren’t for Jamie’s eyes,” said Doctor Joe.
And then he turned and went out of doors and down to the beach, and for a little while paced up and down, with his head bent in thought.