HE next thing that Billy knew he was waking up, not wide awake, but a little at a time.
The room seemed very white, and there was somebody in white standing by his bed. No, it wasn’t Miss King, for this woman had something white on her head.
Then he felt somebody holding his hand and saying, “Billy, little Billy.”
He woke up a little further. He tried to say, “Aunt Mary,” but the words wouldn’t come.
The woman in white took hold of Aunt Mary, and led her out of the room.
Then he saw something large in the window. He wasn’t at all sure that he wasn’t dreaming about mountains. But this mountain had a round top and, while he watched it, it moved. Billy woke up enough to see that it was somebody standing in the window.
Billy knew only one person who could fill up a window like that. He tried his voice again. This time he made it go.
“That you, Mr. Prescott?” he said, his voice going up and up till it ended in a funny little quaver.
Then the mountain came over to him. It was Mr. Prescott.
Billy, looking up, spoke again, very slowly:
“The dimes did roll into the river, Mr. Prescott.”
“Hang it!” said Mr. Prescott. “Of course they did!”
The nurse nodded. “He’s kept talking about that,” she said. “We thought perhaps you’d know.”
Mr. Prescott started to go close to the bed.
The nurse put out her hand.
“Hang it!” said Mr. Prescott. “I was a brute. Can you ever forgive me, Billy?”
“Sure, sir,” answered Billy.
His voice sounded so strong that the nurse told Mr. Prescott that she was afraid he was exciting the patient.
Billy said, “Please stay.”
Then the nurse told Mr. Prescott that he might stay ten minutes if he wouldn’t talk to the patient.
Billy tried to smile at Mr. Prescott, but he was so tired that he shut his eyes instead.
Next time it was Uncle John who was holding his hand, but Uncle John didn’t smile.
“Uncle John,” said Billy, “what’s the matter with me?”
“Just a few broken bones, Billy, my lad,” answered Uncle John.
“Which ones?” asked Billy.
“Just a left arm and a left leg.”
“That all?” asked Billy.
After that they wouldn’t let him see anybody. There were two nurses instead of one, and three doctors—“specialists” Billy heard his own nurse say.
After that there were two doctors every day: a doctor with white hair, and a doctor with light brown hair, parted in the middle.
The doctor with the white hair seemed to think more about Billy than he did about his bones, for he talked to Billy while he was feeling around.
The young doctor seemed to think more about the bones. But Billy liked him, too, for one day when they were hurting him terribly the young doctor said:
“You’re a game sort of chap.”
Billy wasn’t quite sure what “game” meant, but he kept right on gritting his teeth till they were through.
The first day that the young doctor began to come alone, he said:
“Nurse, how are the contusions getting along?”
“They are much lighter in color, doctor, this morning,” answered the nurse.
“I don’t understand,” said the doctor, standing very straight and putting his forefinger on his chin, “how a fall of the nature of this one, practically on the left side, could have produced so many contusions on the right.”
“What are contusions?” asked Billy.
The doctor began to talk about stasis of the circulation following superficial injuries.
“Show me one,” said Billy.
When the nurse showed him one on his right arm, just below the shoulder, Billy said:
“Oh, one of my black and blue spots! That must have been when I was playing caged lion.”
That time the doctor and the nurse were the ones who didn’t understand.
Then Billy laughed, a happy boyish laugh. He hadn’t laughed that way since he and his father used to have frolics together.
The doctor looked at him a minute, then he said:
“Nurse, to-morrow this young chap may have company for half an hour.”
“I’m glad to hear that, doctor,” said the nurse. “I’ll go right away to tell Mr. Prescott. He’s fairly worn me out with telephoning to know when we would let him come.”
At ten o’clock the next morning Mr. Prescott came.
After he had answered Billy’s questions about the fire, and had told him that the new roof was almost finished, he took a newspaper out of his pocket.
He folded it across, then down on both sides, and held it up in front of Billy.
There it was, in big head-lines:
“BILLY BRADFORD SAVES PRESCOTT MILL”
Then Mr. Prescott read him what the paper said. They had even put in about finding him with the flowers in his buttonhole.
“Those,” interrupted Billy, “were Miss King’s flowers.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Prescott; “she cried, right in the office, when she read that.”
Then Billy told Mr. Prescott about the closet, and all about the box, and asked him to pull out the drawer in the little stand by his bed.
There lay his jack-knife. Somebody had shut up all that was left of the blades, and there was so little left that they couldn’t be opened.
Mr. Prescott put the knife into Billy’s hand.
“That was a good knife,” said Billy, looking at it with affection.
“I think,” said Mr. Prescott, “that you really ought to let me have that knife.”
Billy hesitated a moment, then he said:
“If you please, Mr. Prescott, I should like to keep that knife. It has been a good friend to me.”
Mr. Prescott took the little white hand, knife and all, in his own strong, firm fingers.
“I want it, Billy, because you have been a good friend to me.”
Billy’s face flushed so suddenly red that Mr. Prescott was afraid that something was going to happen to Billy. He called, “Nurse!”
“I’m all right,” said Billy.
He grew red again as he said:
“Mr. Prescott, I want to tell you something.”
Mr. Prescott said: “Let me fix your pillows first.”
Of course he got them all mixed up, and the nurse had to come. She looked at her watch, and then at Mr. Prescott, but she didn’t say anything.
Then Mr. Prescott sat close by the bed with Billy’s hand lying in his, and Billy told him about William Wallace.
Mr. Prescott looked a little surprised, then he said:
“William Wallace seems to know a good deal, doesn’t he?”
Billy, in honor, had to nod his head, but he grew very sober. Perhaps, after all, Mr. Prescott would like William Wallace better than he liked him.
“I don’t really approve,” said Mr. Prescott, “of his calling you a coward, though that sometimes makes a boy try to be brave.
“One thing is sure, he can’t ever call you that again, can he?”
Billy shook his head.
“Personally,” continued Mr. Prescott, almost as if he were talking business, “I had rather be saved by you than by William Wallace. Can you guess why?”
Billy shook his head again, but this time he smiled.
“Because,” said Mr. Prescott, “you did it out of your heart. William Wallace would have done it out of his head.”
Billy smiled serenely. Everything—broken jack-knife, broken arm, broken leg—was exactly all right now.
“Really and truly,” Mr. Prescott went on, “there are two of everybody, only most people don’t seem to know it: one is his heart, and the other is his head.
“If I were you, I would be on good terms with William Wallace—it generally takes both to decide. I’d take him as a sort of brother, but I wouldn’t let him rule.”
“No,” said Billy.
Then Mr. Prescott saw the nurse coming, and he hurried off.
The next time that Uncle John came Billy asked him what had become of the man—“the poor man,” Billy called him.
“That man,” said Uncle John, his mouth growing rather firm, “was found out in his sin.
“He undertook a little too much when he set fire to one end of the mill, and then tried to blow up the main office. That’s too much for one man to do at one time, especially when he’s a man that leaves things around.”
“Oh!” said Billy.
“Now,” said Uncle John, “he’s where he’s having his actions regulated.”
“I hope,” said Billy, “that they’ll be good to him.”
“Billy,” said Uncle John, very decidedly, “all that you are called upon to do about that man is to believe that he couldn’t think straight.
“But the way this world is made makes it necessary, when a man can’t think straighter than to try to destroy the very mill where he’s working, for some one else to do a part of his thinking for him.
“That’s what the men that make the laws are trying to do. They are trying to help men to think straight.”
Billy was listening hard. It was a good while since he had heard one of Uncle John’s lectures.
“You know, Billy, my lad, that there are a lot of things we have to leave to God.”
“Yes, Uncle John.”
“There are a lot more that we have to leave to the law.
“The best thing for a boy like you and a man like me to do is to leave things where they belong.”
“All right, Uncle John, I will,” said Billy, giving a little sigh of relief as if he were glad to have that off his mind.
The next day when Mr. Prescott came, he told Billy that, the day after that, he was to be moved to Mr. Prescott’s house on the hill.
Billy looked a little sober. He had been thinking a great deal about home.
“I’m all alone in that big house,” said Mr. Prescott.
“Then,” said Billy, “I’ll come.”
