A HERO REWARDED
A week later Lena May was in the sunny kitchen of the Pensinger mansion
making broth. A curly-headed three-year-old boy was sitting on the floor
playing contentedly with his toys. He had been told that his mother had
gone to a beautiful country where she would be well and happy and that
some day he would see her again.
"Muvver likes Tony to stay wiv you, Auntie May," he prattled as the girl
stooped to kiss him. Then, as he suddenly reached up his chubby arms, he
added: "Tony likes to stay wiv you."
"There, now, the broth's ready and Tony may help Auntie May," she told
him. The little fellow was given a plate of crackers and the girl
followed with a bowl of steaming refreshment. They went to Bobs' room,
where a lad was lying in bed.
Once again Dean Wiggin had fought a fire for the sake of a friend, but
this time had undone the harm that had been done in the long ago. Even
the surgeon who had been called in declared that the way the lad had
wrenched his arm free and had actually used it was little less than a
miracle; but, all through the ages, people who with a high purpose have
called upon God for help, have received it, and that help has been named
a miracle.
"See, Lena May," the lad said as he stretched out his left arm, "it
moves, doesn't it? Stiffly, perhaps, but I must keep it going, the doctor
told me." Then he drew himself into a sitting position and the girl
raised the pillows to make him comfortable.
He smiled at her beamingly as he said: "Another bit of good news is that
tomorrow I may get up. Just because one wall of a burning tenement fell
on me is no reason why I should remain in bed longer than one week and be
waited upon."
"You surely had a wonderful escape, Dean," the girl said as she gave him
the broth. "Just by chance the firemen instantly turned the water where
you had fallen and so you weren't burned."
"Nor drowned," the lad said merrily, "just knocked senseless." Then,
after a moment's pause, he continued: "I want to be up and about before
Nell returns. She will be in about noon tomorrow. Unless it got into the
New England papers, which isn't likely, she won't know a thing about it.
I don't want her to hear of it before I tell her. She would imagine all
sorts of things that aren't true, and be needlessly worried."
"How glad your sister will be when she finds that the use of your arm has
been restored to you." Lena May sat by the bedside holding Tony on her
lap.
"Won't she?" Dean's upward glance was radiant. "No longer will I have to
follow the profession of old book-seller. I want to do something that
will keep that arm constantly busy."
"What, Dean, have you thought?"
"Yes, indeed. You won't think it a very wonderful ambition. I want to be
a farmer. I don't like this crowded city. I feel as though I can't
breathe. When I am lying here alone, I keep thinking of the New England
farm where my boyhood was spent, and I long to really work in that rocky
soil, standing up now and then to breathe deep of that sparkling air and
to gaze at that wide view over the meadow-lands, and the shining, curving
silver ribbon, that is really a river, to the distant mountains. Lena
May, how I wish you could see it with me."
"I am sure that I would love it," the girl said, then, rising, she added:
"Here comes Gloria and Mr. Hardinian. They are going to hear some
Hungarian music tonight, and I promised to have an early supper for them.
Tony may stay with you. I am sure he would like to hear a story about the
little wild creatures who live on your farm."
But, when the girl was gone, the little fellow accommodatingly curled up
by Dean's side and went to sleep, and so the lad's thoughts were left
free to dream of a wonderful something that might happen some day on that
far-away New England farm.