INSIDE we found my father busy practising on the flute beside the fire.
This he always did, every evening, after his work was over.
The Doctor immediately began talking to him about flutes and piccolos
and bassoons; and presently my father said,
“Perhaps you perform upon the flute yourself, Sir. Won’t you play us a
tune?”
“Well,” said the Doctor, “it is a long time since I touched the
instrument. But I would like to try. May I?”
Then the Doctor took the flute from my father and played and played and
played. It was wonderful. My mother and father sat as still as statues,
staring up at the ceiling as though they were in church; and even I,
who didn’t bother much about music except on the mouth-organ—even I
felt all sad and cold and creepy and wished I had been a better boy.
“Oh I think that was just beautiful!” sighed my mother when at length
the Doctor stopped.
“You are a great musician, Sir,” said my father, “a very great
musician. Won’t you please play us something else?”
“Why certainly,” said the Doctor—“Oh, but look here, I’ve forgotten all
about the squirrel.”
“I’ll show him to you,” I said. “He is upstairs in my room.”
So I led the Doctor to my bedroom at the top of the house and showed
him the squirrel in the packing-case filled with straw.
The animal, who had always seemed very much afraid of me—though I had
tried hard to make him feel at home, sat up at once when the Doctor
came into the room and started to chatter. The Doctor chattered back
in the same way and the squirrel when he was lifted up to have his leg
examined, appeared to be rather pleased than frightened.
I held a candle while the Doctor tied the leg up in what he called
“splints,” which he made out of match-sticks with his pen-knife.
“I think you will find that his leg will get better now in a very short
time,” said the Doctor closing up his bag. “Don’t let him run about for
at least two weeks yet, but keep him in the open air and cover him up
with dry leaves if the nights get cool. He tells me he is rather lonely
here, all by himself, and is wondering how his wife and children are
getting on. I have assured him you are a man to be trusted; and I will
send a squirrel who lives in my garden to find out how his family are
and to bring him news of them. He must be kept cheerful at all costs.
Squirrels are naturally a very cheerful, active race. It is very hard
for them to lie still doing nothing. But you needn’t worry about him.
He will be all right.”
Then we went back again to the parlor and my mother and father kept him
playing the flute till after ten o’clock.
Although my parents both liked the Doctor tremendously from the first
moment that they saw him, and were very proud to have him come and play
to us (for we were really terribly poor) they did not realize then
what a truly great man he was one day to become. Of course now, when
almost everybody in the whole world has heard about Doctor Dolittle and
his books, if you were to go to that little house in Puddleby where
my father had his cobbler’s shop you would see, set in the wall over
the old-fashioned door, a stone with writing on it which says: “JOHN
DOLITTLE, THE FAMOUS NATURALIST, PLAYED THE FLUTE IN THIS HOUSE IN THE
YEAR 1839.”
I often look back upon that night long, long ago. And if I close my
eyes and think hard I can see that parlor just as it was then: a funny
little man in coat-tails, with a round kind face, playing away on the
flute in front of the fire; my mother on one side of him and my father
on the other, holding their breath and listening with their eyes shut;
myself, with Jip, squatting on the carpet at his feet, staring into the
coals; and Polynesia perched on the mantlepiece beside his shabby high
hat, gravely swinging her head from side to side in time to the music.
I see it all, just as though it were before me now.
And then I remember how, after we had seen the Doctor out at the front
door, we all came back into the parlor and talked about him till it
was still later; and even after I did go to bed (I had never stayed up
so late in my life before) I dreamed about him and a band of strange
clever animals that played flutes and fiddles and drums the whole night
through.
_THE SEVENTH CHAPTER_