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Daniel And Little Dan’l
by
Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. “Of course she can, Mr. Wise,” she said.
The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rector’s horse, and brought Content to pay a call on little Dan’l. Sally and Sarah Dean visited in the sitting-room, and left the little girls alone in the parlor with a plate of cookies, to get acquainted. They sat in solemn silence and stared at each other. Neither spoke. Neither ate a cooky. When Sally took her leave, she asked little Dan’l if she had had a nice time with Content, and little Dan’l said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Sarah insisted upon Content’s carrying the cookies home in the dish with a napkin over it.
“When can I go again to see that other little girl?” asked Content as she and Sally were jogging home.
“Oh, almost any time. I will drive you over — because it is rather a lonesome walk for you. Did you like the little girl? She is younger than you.”
“Yes’m.”
Also little Dan’l inquired of old Daniel when the other little girl was coming again, and nodded emphatically when asked if she had had a nice time. Evidently both had enjoyed, after the inscrutable fashion of childhood, their silent session with each other. Content came generally once a week, and old Daniel was invited to take little Dan’l to the rector’s. On that occasion Lucy Rose was present, and Lily Jennings. The four little girls had tea together at a little table set on the porch, and only Lily Jennings talked. The rector drove old Daniel and the child home, and after they had arrived the child’s tongue was loosened and she chattered. She had seen everything there was to be seen at the rector’s. She told of it in her little silver pipe of a voice. She had to be checked and put to bed, lest she be tired out.
“I never knew that child could talk so much,” Sarah said to Daniel, after the little girl had gone up-stairs.
“She talks quite some when she’s alone with me.”
“And she seems to see everything.”
“Ain’t much that child don’t see,” said Daniel, proudly.
The summer continued unusually hot, but Daniel never again succumbed. When autumn came, for the first time in his old life old Daniel Wise was sorrowful. He dreaded the effect of the frost and the winter upon his precious little Dan’l, whom he put before himself as fondly as any father could have done, and as the season progressed his dread seemed justified. Poor little Dan’l had cold after cold. Content Adams and Lucy Rose came to see her. The rector’s wife and the doctor’s sent dainties. But the child coughed and pined, and old Daniel began to look forward to spring and summer — the seasons which had been his bugaboos through life — as if they were angels. When the February thaw came, he told little Dan’l, “Jest look at the snow meltin’ and the drops hangin’ on the trees; that is a sign of summer.”
Old Daniel watched for the first green light along the fences and the meadow hollows. When the trees began to cast slightly blurred shadows, because of budding leaves, and the robins hopped over the terraces, and now and then the air was cleft with blue wings, he became jubilant. “Spring is jest about here, and then uncle’s little Dan’l will stop coughin’, and run out of doors and pick flowers,” he told the child beside the window.
Spring came that year with a riotous rush. Blossoms, leaves, birds, and flowers — all arrived pellmell, fairly smothering the world with sweetness and music. In May, about the first of the month, there was an intensely hot day. It was as hot as midsummer. Old Daniel with little Dan’l went afield. It was, to both, as if they fairly saw the carnival-arrival of flowers, of green garlands upon treebranches, of birds and butterflies. “Spring is right here!” said old Daniel. “Summer is right here! Pick them vilets in that holler, little Dan’l.” The old man sat on a stone in the meadowland, and watched the child in the blue-gleaming hollow gather up violets in her little hands as if they were jewels. The sun beat upon his head, the air was heavy with fragrance, laden with moisture. Old Daniel wiped his forehead. He was heated, but so happy that he was not aware of it. He saw wonderful new lights over everything. He had wielded love, the one invincible weapon of the whole earth, and had conquered his intangible and dreadful enemy. When, for the sake of that little beloved life, his own life had become as nothing, old Daniel found himself superior to it. He sat there in the tumultuous heat of the May day, watching the child picking violets and gathering strength with every breath of the young air of the year, and he realized that the fear of his whole life was overcome for ever. He realized that never again, though they might bring suffering, even death, would he dread the summers with their torrid winds and their burning lights, since, through love, he had become under-lord of all the conditions of his life upon earth.