Chapter 10

OSCAR'S RETURN--THE MYSTERY CLEARED--ON THE TOR AGAIN.

How did Inna bear it?

As she bounded into the fire-lit kitchen, to prefer her request to Mrs. Grant about her kitten, there sat Oscar by the fire, in his own especial chair, just as if he had sat there nightly for the last six weeks: save for this, that he had an ugly scar on his forehead scarcely healed, that his face was thin and wan, and that he wore somebody's clothes, not his own--those in which he had vanished.

"Oscar!" she cried, and sat down and wept over her joy as if it were a sorrow, like a very excited little maiden--that is how she bore her surprise. Mary knew nothing of his arrival; he had come after she had left to bring the little girls home. The poor kitten went flying somewhere, anywhere to be out of the way of such sobs and tears.

"Master--Dr. Willett," called the housekeeper from out of the open kitchen door, wondering what effect the sight of Oscar would have upon the two doctors, who had to bear the sight of so much.

"Yes--what is it?" came wandering back up the passage. The speaker followed close behind, Mr. Barlow behind him. Oscar come back, Inna crying over it. Well, with the coming of the two doctors she soon dried her eyes and inquired for her kitten.

"Kitten, dear?" Mrs. Grant thought there was something a little wrong with her head still, just a cobweb not cleared away, because of her crying so, you know. Not so the doctor, for there came a piteous prolonged mew, and up scrambled the kitten, inside one of the legs of the doctor's trousers. She had missed her way, you see, but had chosen a friend next best to Inna.

"Well, you're no beauty," quoth the doctor, drawing her down from her hiding-place, and holding her on his arm to stroke her; "and you're nothing to cry over, lost or found."

Dr. Willett put her into Inna's arms, where the little thing nestled, as if she knew her rightful place already.

"I didn't cry over the kitten, uncle; I cried over Oscar," said the little girl.

Mr. Barlow had drawn Oscar from the room and himself stayed with him, to keep him there.

"Where is Oscar?--it isn't a dream, is it?" and Inna's eyes swept the room.

"Dream? no, my dear; he was here just now. Isn't it his rightful place?" spoke the doctor drily.

"Yes, only--only----"

"Ah! yes, only you want to know where he has been, what he has been doing, and what right he had to come back in this matter-of-fact way, when you had been imagining all sorts of unlikely things about him; and so you cried over it, to give the whole thing the girl-like touch it lacked. Ha--ha!"

This was Mr. Barlow's speech, putting his head in at the kitchen door, to see how they were getting on.

"Yes, come in, both of you," said the doctor, that sorrowful gravity lifted from his face already.

"Well, my boy, you have taken a heavy weight from my heart and added years to my life by coming back," was what he said, drawing the lad to him, and laying his hand on his shoulder.

"Have you missed me so much, uncle?" asked Oscar.

"Missed!" A look passed over Dr. Willett's face, which Inna, watching, thought very like that on her father's face when he kissed her "Good-bye," before she came down to the farm.

"Missed you, Master Oscar! yes, we're all missed, even when 'tis a boy we're keeping the farm for," was Mrs. Grant's unlooked-for remark.

"Very silly of Mrs. Grant, to bring up that question of the farm on the first night of the boy's return," observed the doctor, when he and his friend were sipping their coffee together, the young folk gone to bed, the budget of Oscar's adventures to be opened on the morrow.

"You see, dear," said that lady to Inna, after Jenny was asleep; and Inna's eyes were sadly wakeful. "You see, dear, I wanted Master Oscar to see, while his heart was tender, on this first night, that as he had been missed and wanted by his uncle, it ought to be 'give and take' with him, when I spoke about the farm."

"Give and take?"

"Yes, Miss Inna, give and take; it's that as smooths life's rough places. Master Oscar has nothing to give his uncle for all he's doing for him, but his will--letting go that foolish nonsense about the sea. He ought to give up the sea and take to the farm--that would be his giving and taking; and his uncle would give him the farm, and take his--his obedience to his wishes, as a sort of harvest of love after all the years of sowing."

"Sowing?" said Inna.

"Yes, the doctor has sown a deal of trouble, thought, and anxiety over this young brother of his, at last lost at sea--that's Oscar's father, you know. I think, in his quiet way, he's set his heart on the boy making him some return, in the way of love and gratitude; and besides, he says, putting him into the farm is the best thing he can do for him, leaving out the love, obedience, and gratitude, and----" But Inna was asleep.

Well, the next evening's tea-drinking, over which Inna presided, was a sort of state tea-drinking at which Dr. Willett sat down, a thing he had scarcely ever been known to do before. But then, Oscar was to tell his adventures during tea; a poor, thin, hollow-eyed narrator was he, who had been down well-nigh to death's door.

The tea-table was gay with spring flowers, and through the open window came a chorus of sweet sounds, the bleating of lambs from the meadows, the lowing of the cows being driven home to their milking, the song of birds, the hum of insects--bees and gnats--the one toiling, the others dancing in idleness: types and shadows of the human race, as Mr. Barlow remarked. To which Jenny added, "Yes; and of boys and girls--the girls working, the boys idle."

But to this there was no time to make reply, for Inna had supplied them all with tea, and Oscar had cleared his throat like a story-teller in a book, and was waiting to begin.

"Well, you know when I started, and you shouted, and I shouted back," said he.

"Yes, we know--hurry up!" spoke Jenny, like an unmannerly boy.

"I went on first-rate for a time, then I came to a full stop, for I was at the Ugly Leap; and before I knew it I was over."

"Not much of a full stop; I should say a note of exclamation was dashed in there," remarked Mr. Barlow.

"I don't think I uttered a sound; I think I was too horrified--that is as girlish, I know, as if I'd screamed!"

"Oh! Oscar, you did scream: 'twas that which told us something was wrong," put in the interrupting damsel Jenny.

"And no wonder. I'm not sure I shouldn't have screamed myself; and boys are but mortal, the same as doctors," remarked Mr. Barlow.

"But not nearly so wise," interrupted Jenny again.

"Nor yet so talkative as young ladies; and if present company will excuse me, I should like some of them to be quiet," said Oscar.

"Well, my boy, after the scream----" prompted Mr. Barlow.

"Well, if I _did_ scream, after that there was a silence and the full stop, for I fell to the bottom; and when I came to my senses I was jolting along in a caravan--such jolting, and I full of pain and dizziness. That was a ride to town, and no mistake--Bulverton, the town was called, where they took me to a hospital."

"Who?" inquired irrepressible Jenny.

"The gipsies--I was in a gipsy caravan; they were passing the road at the bottom of the Leap, hurrying away from justice of some sort, I should say, and, hearing me moan, were humane enough to pick me up out of my snowy bed, and carry me along with them. By the time they reached Bulverton I was unconscious, in a high fever, and I don't know what. They made it all right with the hospital people, somehow, that they had no hand in bringing me to the state I was in. I was terribly knocked about--a blow on my head, besides this on my forehead, a broken arm, and a good shaking generally. 'Twas a wonder I escaped with my life, the doctors told me, when I came out of my bad turn--you know the dodge, Mr. Barlow; you all make a miracle of what you do for sick people." Mr. Barlow shook his fist at him.

"I kept who I was a secret, though, and wouldn't tell my name. I didn't want to make a fuss here, you know, but on the last morning it all came out. One of the doctors saw your description of me, uncle, and the police came ferreting me out as well, I believe; and so I'd nothing to do but throw off my disguise, and come home like a bad penny. I daresay you'll have a bill, uncle, for sticking-plaster and so on."

"Which I shall be happy to pay, Oscar," said the grave doctor.

This was Oscar's story. Well, the bill came from the Bulverton hospital, and was duly settled by Dr. Willett, and all things fell into their usual train, save that Oscar, being unfit for study, and Dick away at school, had rather a dull time of it.

The weather was glorious, and of course he roamed about, and went some excursions with Inna, Jenny, and the donkey and cart, the twins from the Owl's Nest sometimes swelling the number; but an outing with a pack of girls, as he said, was but a very tame affair, and often he sighed for midsummer and Dick.

Both came at last, as all good things are said to do to the waiting ones, and the meeting on the Lakely platform was almost overwhelming as Dick sprang out among them all; Oscar and the four girls clustering round him like bees, while Rameses, with the cart at a respectful distance, stretched out his neck, and brayed such a note of welcome, that the attendant porter laughed till he held his sides. With Dick's coming, the state of affairs looked up--here, there, and everywhere went the two boys, not always with a string of girls after them, as Dick slightingly expressed it.

Once, according to their own words, they took revenge upon the old Tor, and had picnics upon its wind-swept heights in a body; but where the revenge lay they themselves best knew. But the girls looked down the Ugly Leap with awe, Oscar, with his scarred forehead, looking down with the rest. A wonderfully clear view they had of the sea and the Swallow's Cliff.

"I say," cried Dick, the happy thought striking him as he gazed, "couldn't we take the girls over as far as the cliffs and the sea? They've never been there, you know, Willett, and 'twouldn't be too far, if we took old Rameses and the cart."

"Just a nice little outing," agreed Oscar; and down they all sat in council to sketch out the programme, to use their own words.