第24章 DANIEL AND LITTLE DAN'L(5)

"Old Daniel Wise is overcome by the heat," an-swered Dr. Trumbull. "Put all the ice you have in the house in your wagon, and come along. I'll leave my horse and buggy here. Your horse is faster."Presently the farm-wagon clattered down the road, dust-hidden behind a galloping horse. Mrs. Jim Mann, who was a loving mother of children, was soothing little Dan'l. Johnny Trumbull watched at the gate. When the wagon returned he ran out and hung on behind, while the strong, ungainly farm-horse galloped to the house set high on the sun-baked terraces.

When old Daniel revived he found himself in the best parlor, with ice all about him. Thunder was rolling overhead and hail clattered on the windows.

A sudden storm, the heat-breaker, had come up and the dreadful day was vanquished. Daniel looked up and smiled a vague smile of astonishment at Dr.

Trumbull and Sarah Dean; then his eyes wandered anxiously about.

"The child is all right," said Dr. Trumbull;"don't you worry, Daniel. Mrs. Jim Mann is tak-ing care of her. Don't you try to talk. You didn't exactly have a sunstroke, but the heat was too much for you."But Daniel spoke, in spite of the doctor's man-date. "The heat," said he, in a curiously clear voice," ain't never goin' to be too much for me again.""Don't you talk, Daniel," repeated Dr. Trum-bull. "You've always been nervous about the heat.

Maybe you won't be again, but keep still. When Itold you to take that child out every day I didn't mean when the world was like Sodom and Gomor-rah. Thank God, it will be cooler now."

Sarah Dean stood beside the doctor. She looked pale and severe, but adequate. She did not even state that she had urged old Daniel not to go out.

There was true character in Sarah Dean.

The weather that summer was an unexpected quantity. Instead of the day after the storm being cool, it was hot. However, old Daniel, after his re-covery, insisted on going out of doors with little Dan'l after breakfast. The only concession which he would make to Sarah Dean, who was fairly fran-tic with anxiety, was that he would merely go down the road as far as the big elm-tree, that he would sit down there, and let the child play about within sight.

"You'll be brought home agin, sure as preachin',"said Sarah Dean, "and if you're brought home ag'in, you won't get up ag'in."Old Daniel laughed. "Now don't you worry, Sarah," said he. "I'll set down under that big ellum and keep cool."Old Daniel, at Sarah's earnest entreaties, took a palm-leaf fan. But he did not use it. He sat peace-fully under the cool trail of the great elm all the forenoon, while little Dan'l played with her doll.

The child was rather languid after her shock of the day before, and not disposed to run about. Also, she had a great sense of responsibility about the old man. Sarah Dean had privately charged her not to let Uncle Daniel get "overhet." She continually glanced up at him with loving, anxious, baby eyes.

"Be you overhet. Uncle Dan'l?" she would ask.

"No, little Dan'l, uncle ain't a mite overhet,"the old man would assure her. Now and then little Dan'l left her doll, climbed into the old man's lap, and waved the palm-leaf fan before his face.

Old Daniel Wise loved her so that he seemed, to himself, fairly alight with happiness. He made up his mind that he would find some little girl in the village to come now and then and play with little Dan'l.

In the cool of that evening he stole out of the back door, covertly, lest Sarah Dean discover him, and walked slowly to the rector's house in the village.

The rector's wife was sitting on her cool, vine-shaded veranda. She was alone, and Daniel was glad. He asked her if the little girl who had come to live with her, Content Adams, could not come the next after-noon and see little Dan'l. "Little Dan'l had ought to see other children once in a while, and Sarah Dean makes real nice cookies," he stated, pleadingly.

Sally Patterson laughed good-naturedly. "Of course she can, Mr. Wise," she said.

The next afternoon Sally herself drove the rec-tor'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.