What Timmy Did | Page 3

stay with us."
"Is he now?" The shrewd Irishman looked sharply into her troubled
face. "Well, well, you'll have to let bygones be bygones--eh, Mrs. Toss?
I take it he's a great man now."
"I don't think money makes for greatness," she said.
"Don't you?" he queried drily. "I do! Come admit, woman, that you're
sorry now you didn't let Betty take the risk?"
"I'm not at all sorry--" she cried. "It was all his fault. He was such a
strange, rough, violent young fellow!"
The words trembled on the old doctor's lips--"Perhaps it will all come
right now!" But he checked himself, for in his heart of hearts he did not
in the least believe that it would all come right. He knew well enough
that Godfrey Radmore, after that dramatic exit to Australia, had cut
himself clean off from all his friends. He was coming back now as that
wonderful thing to most people--a millionaire. Was it likely, so the
worldly-wise old doctor asked himself, that a man whose whole
circumstances had so changed, ever gave a thought to that old boyish
love affair with Betty Tosswill?--violent, piteous and painful as the
affair had been. But had Betty forgotten? About that the doctor had his
doubts, but he kept them strictly to himself.
He changed the subject abruptly. "It isn't scarlet fever at the
Mortons--only a bit of a red rash. I thought you'd like to know.
"It's good of you to have come and told me," she exclaimed. "I confess
I did feel anxious, for Timmy was there the whole of the day before
yesterday."

"Ah! and how's me little friend?"
Janet Tosswill looked around--but no, there was no one in the corridor
of which the door, giving into the hall, was wide open.
"He's gone to do an errand for me in the village."
"The boy is much more normal, eh?" He looked at her questioningly.
"He still says that he sees things," she admitted reluctantly, "though
he's rather given' up confiding in me. He tells old Nanna extraordinary
tales, but then, as you know, Timmy was always given to romancing,
and of course Nanna believes every word he says and in a way
encourages him."
The doctor looked at Timmy's mother with a twinkle in his eye. "Nanna
isn't the only one," he observed. "I was told in the village just now that
Master Timmy had scared away the milk from Tencher's cow."
A look of annoyance came over Mrs. Tosswill's face. "I shall have to
speak to Timmy," she exclaimed. "He's much too given to threatening
the village people with ill fortune if they have done anything he thinks
wrong or unkind. The child was awfully upset the other day because he
discovered that the Tenchers had drowned a half-grown kitten."
"He's a queer little chap," observed the old doctor, "a broth of a boy, if
ye'll allow me to say so--I'd be proud of Timmy if I were his mother,
Mrs. Toss!"
"Perhaps I am proud of him," she said smiling, "but still I always tell
John he's a changeling child--so absurdly unlike all the others."
"Ah, but that's where you come in, me good friend. 'Twas a witch you
must have had among ye're ancestresses in the long ago."
He gripped her hand, and went out to his two-seater, his mind still full
of his friend's strange little son.
Then all at once--he could not have told you why--Dr. O'Farrell's mind

switched off to something very different, and he went back into the hall
again.
"A word more with ye, Mrs. Tosswill. What sort of a lady has taken
The Trellis House, eh? We don't even know her name."
"She's a Mrs. Crofton--oddly enough, a friend or acquaintance of
Godfrey Radmore. He seems to have first met her during the war, when
he was quartered in Egypt. She wrote to John and asked if there was a
house to let in Beechfield, quoting Godfrey as having told her it was a
delightful village."
"And how old may she be?"
"Her husband was a Colonel Crofton, so I suppose she's middle-aged.
She's only been a widow three months--if as long."
Janet Tosswill waited till Dr. O'Farrell was well away, and then she
began walking down the broad corridor which divided Old Place. It
was such a delightful, dignified, spacious house, and very dear to them
all, yet Janet was always debating within herself whether they ought to
go on living in it, now that they had become so poor.
When she came to the last door on the left, close to the baize door
Which shut off the commons from the living rooms, she waited a
moment. Then, turning the handle, she walked into what was still called
the schoolroom, though Timmy never did his