Ethel Morton and the Christmas Ship Part 21

That pa.s.sion was for speed. When he was a very small child he had made it his habit to descend the stairs by way of the rail at the infinite risk of his neck. Once he had run his head through the slats of a chicken coop into which an over-swift hopmobile had thrown him. On roller skates his accidents had been beyond counting because his calculations of distance often seemed not to work out harmoniously with his velocity. It was because Doctor Hanc.o.c.k thought that if the boy had the responsibility for his father's machine and for other people's bones he would learn to exercise proper care, that he had consented to let him become his chauffeur. The plan had seemed to work well, but once in a while the desire to fly got the better of James's discretion.

"Here's where the car gets ahead of the aeroplane," said the doctor. "An aviator would find it dangerous work to skim along only two feet above ground."

"I did want to go up with that airman at Chautauqua last summer!" cried James.

"Why didn't you?"

"Cost too much. Twenty-five plunks."

The doctor whistled.

"Flying high always costs," he said meditatively.

"The Ethels went up. They haven't done talking about it yet. They named the man's machine, so he gave them a ride."

"Good work! Look out for these corners, now. When you've studied physics a bit longer you'll learn why it is that a speeding body can't change its direction at an angle of ninety degrees and maintain its equilibrium unless it decreases its speed."

James thought this over for a while.

"In other words, slow up going round corners," he translated, "and later I'll learn why."

"Words to that effect," replied the doctor mildly.

"Here's a good straight bit," exclaimed James. "You don't care if I let her out, do you? There's nothing in sight."

"Watch that cross road."

"Yes, sir. Isn't this moon great!" murmured James under his breath, excited by the brilliant light and the cool air and the swift motion.

"Always keep your eyes open for these heavy shadows that the moon casts," directed Doctor Hanc.o.c.k. "Sometimes they're deceptive."

"I'll keep in the middle of the road and then the bugaboo in the shadow can see us even if I can't see him," laughed James, the moonlight in his eyes and the rush of wind in his ears.

"There's something moving there! LOOK OUT!" shouted the doctor as a cow strolled slowly out from behind a tree and chewed a meditative cud right across their path. James made a swift, abrupt curve, and did not touch her.

"That was a close one," he whispered, his hands shaking on the wheel.

"It hasn't worried her any," reported his father, looking back. "She hasn't budged and she's still chewing. You did that very well, son. It was a difficult situation."

James flushed warmly. His father was not a man to give praise often so that every word of commendation from him was doubly valued by his children.

"Thank you. I shouldn't like to have it happen every day," James confessed.

They sped on in silence after the cow episode, the boy glad of the chance to steady his nerves in the quiet, the doctor thinking of the case he was to visit in a few minutes.

The patient's house stood on the edge of Glen Point, and James sat in the car resting and watching the machines of the townspeople pa.s.sing by with gay parties out to enjoy the moonlight. Some, like themselves, had been to Rosemont, and some of his schoolmates waved to him as they pa.s.sed.

"It was a great show, old man," more than one boy shouted to him.

It had been a good show. He knew it and he was glad that he belonged to a club that really amounted to something. They did things well and they didn't do them well just to show off or to get praise--they had a good purpose behind. He was still thinking about it when his father came out.

Doctor Hanc.o.c.k did not talk about his cases, but James had learned that silence meant that there was need for serious thought and that the doctor was in no mood to enter into conversation. When he came out laughing, however, and jumped into the car with a care-free jest, as happened now, James knew that all was going well.

"Now, home, boy," he directed. "Stop at the drug store an instant."

He gave some directions to a clerk who hurried out to them and then they drove on. The moonlight sifted through the trees and flickered on the road. A cool breeze stimulated James's skin to a s.h.i.+ver. On they went, faster and faster. He'd had a mighty good time all the evening, James thought, and Father was a crackerjack.

"LOOK OUT, boy," his father's voice rang through his thoughts. The car struck the curb with a shock that loosened his grasp on the wheel and tossed him into the air. As he flew up he tried to say, "I cut the corner too close that time," but he never knew whether he said it or not, for his voice seemed to fail him and his father could not recall hearing such a remark.

It was quite an hour later when he came to himself. To his amazement he found himself in his own room. The light was shaded, his mother with tears still filling her eyes was beside him, and his father and a young man whom he recognized as the new doctor who had just come to Glen Point, were putting away instruments. He tried to move in the bed and found that his leg was extraordinarily heavy.

"Did I bust my leg?" he inquired briefly.

"You did," returned his father with equal brevity.

"Weren't you hurt?"

"A scratch on the forehead, that's all. Doctor Hanson is going to patch me up now."

The two physicians left the room and James did not know until long after that the scratch required several st.i.tches to mend.

His illness was a severe trial to James. His Scottish blood taught him that his punishment fitted his crime--that he was hurt as a direct result of doing what he knew was likely to bring that result. He said to himself that he was going to take his punishment like a man. But oh, the days were long! The Glen Point boys came in when they thought of it--there was some one almost every day--but the Indian Summer was unusually prolonged and wonderfully beautiful this year, and it was more than any one could ask in reason that the boys should give up outdoors to stay with him. Roger and Helen and the Ethels and Dorothy came over from Rosemont when they could, but their daily work had to be done and they had only a few minutes to stay after the long trolley trip.

"We must think up something for James to do," Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k told Margaret. "He's tired of reading. He can use his hands. Hasn't your Service Club something that he can work on here?" Margaret thought it had, and the result of the conversation was that Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k went to Rosemont on an afternoon car. The Ethels took her to Mrs. Smith's and Dorothy showed her the acc.u.mulation for the Christmas s.h.i.+p that already was making a good showing in the attic devoted to the work.

"These bundles in the packing cases are all finished and ready for their final wrappings," Dorothy explained. "There are dresses and wrappers and sacques and sweaters and all sorts of warm clothing like that."

"And you girls did almost all of it!" exclaimed Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k.

"Helen and Margaret made most of those," said Ethel Brown. "In this box are the knitted articles that are coming in every day now. Most of them are from the Old Ladies' Home so far, but every once in a while somebody else stops and leaves something. We girls don't knit much; it seems to go so slowly."

"I brought one pair of wristers with me and I have another pair almost done," said Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k. "What are these?"

"Those are the boxes the boys have been pasting," said Ethel Blue, picking up one of them. "They began with the large plain ones first--the real packing boxes."

"Here are some that are large enough for a dress."

"We've gathered all the old boxes we could find in our house or in our friends' houses--Margaret must have hunted in your attic for she brought over some a fortnight ago. None of the things we are making will require a box as large as the tailors send out, so we took those boxes and the broken ones that we found and made them over."

"That must have taken a great deal of time."

"The boys paste pretty fast now. Some of them they made to lock together. They didn't need anything but cutting. They got that idea from a tailor's box that Roger found."

Mrs. Hanc.o.c.k examined the flat pasteboard cut so that the corners would interlock.

"The old boxes they cut down. That saves buying new pasteboard. And they've covered some of the battered looking old ones with fresh paper so they look as good as new--"

"And a great deal prettier," said Dorothy.

"We get wall paper at ten cents a roll for the covering," said Ethel Blue. "They have an old-fas.h.i.+oned air that's attractive, Aunt Marion says," and she held up a box covered with wild roses.