"Ah! True Flint's! I remember all about it. You're his girl! Nice girl, too! And poor True, he's dead! Well, he's a loss to the community! So this is the little nurse I used to see there. Bless me! how children do grow!"
"Doctor Jeremy," asked Gertrude, in an earnest voice, "will you please to tell me how Miss Emily is?"
"Die! No! What should she die for? I won't let her die, if you'll help me to keep her alive. Why an't you in the house taking care of her?"
"I wish I might!" exclaimed Gertrude, starting up; "I wish I might!"
"Mrs. Ellis, sir; she won't let me in; she says Miss Emily doesn't want anybody but her."
"She's nothing to say about it, or Emily either; it's my business, and I want you. I'd rather have you to take care of my patients than all the Mrs. Ellises in the world. She knows nothing about nursing; let her stick to her cranberry-sauce and squash-pies. So, mind, to-morrow you're to begin."
"Don't thank me yet; wait till you've tried it--it's hard work taking care of sick folks. Whose orchard is that?"
"By George, Mrs. Bruce, I'll try your pears for you!"
As he spoke, the doctor, a man some sixty-five years of age, stout and active, sprung over a stone wall, which separated them from the orchard, and reached the foot of the tree almost at a bound.
As Gertrude watched the proceeding, she observed the doctor stumble over some obstacle, and only saved himself from falling by stretching forth both hands, and sustaining himself against the trunk of the tree. At the same instant a head, adorned with a velvet smoking-cap, was slowly lifted from the long grass, and a youth, about sixteen or seventeen years of age, stared at the intruder.
Nothing daunted, the doctor at once took the offensive ground towards the occupant of the place, saying, "Get up, lazy bones! What do you lie there for, tripping up honest folks?"
"Whom do you call honest folks, sir?" inquired the youth, apparently undisturbed by the doctor's epithet and inquiry. He showed much _sang froid_.
"I call myself and my little friend here remarkably honest people," replied the doctor, winking at Gertrude, who, standing behind the wall and looking over, was laughing at the way in which the doctor had got caught. The young man turned, and gave a broad stare at Gertrude's merry face.