Dani lay in the cart on a sack stretched across a soft mattress of hay and gazed up at the blue sky, where tiny, white, woolly clouds floated by. He would have liked to look over the sides of the cart, but this was impossible, for he could not sit up. So he looked at the sky instead, and Annette described the scenery and what was happening as they went along. Dani’s leg ached badly, which made him rather bad tempered. When the cart jolted he squealed, but Annette spoke to him soothingly to calm him down, and it was still nice to feel so important.
“We are at the top of the village now, Dani,” said Annette, “just passing the church, and there is Emil the dustman’s son driving the cows out of the churchyard. Some naughty person must have left the gate open.”
“Are the cows trying to go into church?” enquired Dani with interest.
“No,” replied Annette. “They were trying to jump over the wall, but it was too high. They were jumping over the gravestones instead. Here we are at the infant school, Dani, and there is the teacher scrubbing her steps. I suppose it is her cleaning day and she has given all the infants a holiday. I wish the schoolmaster had cleaning days. Oh! Here is the teacher coming toward the cart. She has seen us and I expect she wants to know how you are. And here come Madame Pilet and Madame Lenoir. They have seen us, too. They were washing their clothes in the fountain.”
Annette was right. They certainly wanted to know how Dani was, for in a tiny village news travels fast and is much talked about and long remembered because there is so little of it. The postman’s wife had heard some of the story from Lucien’s sister when she phoned for the doctor, and the station master’s wife had heard the rest from Marie while she waited for the early train, and by now everyone was talking about it and everyone wanted to find out more.
So Madame Pilet and Madame Lenoir left their husbands’ shirts bubbling like white balloons in the fountain while Madame Durez, who kept the village shop, left her counter and came running out with two customers behind her. The teacher left her scrubbing bucket to get cold, and they all crowded around the cart and stood on tiptoe to stare at Dani, lying flat on his back on his hay mattress—a little paler than usual, but otherwise quite cheerful and pleased to see them.
“Ah, the little cabbage,” cried the teacher, throwing up her hands. “You must tell us about it, Annette.” Although they had all heard the story once and repeated it to somebody else, they were all ready to listen again. So Annette told them about it, and they shook their heads a great deal and clicked their tongues. They were all very angry with Lucien.
“He is a wicked boy,” said the infant school teacher. “I shall warn the little children not to have anything to do with him!”
“And I shall not allow Pierre to play with him,” said the postman’s wife. “He has a cruel heart. You can see it in his face. I feel sorry for his mother, having a child like that.” She thought proudly of her own cheery, freckle-faced son, who was one of the best-loved boys in the village.
Dani’s father flicked his whip rather impatiently and called back that they must not keep the doctor waiting. The women stood back and the cart lumbered on slowly over the cobblestones. Then they all drew together again and started talking in the middle of the road with their heads very close together.
The cart jolted on and the sun rose higher. The horse did not mind in the least keeping the doctor waiting, and Annette had plenty of time to describe the scenery to Dani as they made their slow way to town.
“The river is almost in flood, Dani,” remarked Annette. “It’s because the fine weather has melted the snows so fast. The water is right over the pine-tree roots, and here a tree has fallen right across like a bridge. Oh, Dani! There is a little grey squirrel wondering whether to run along it or not.”
“Where?” cried Dani, and he forgot and tried to sit up, but fell back with a squeal of pain.
“You can’t see,” Annette warned him. “Anyhow, the squirrel has run back into the wood. We are getting near the station now, Dani, and there are three cows on the platform waiting to be put on the train.”
The journey passed pleasantly. At last houses began to appear, and Annette told Dani they were coming into the town.
“Tell me about the shops,” exclaimed Dani eagerly.
He had been to the town only three times in his short life and thought it was the most wonderful place in the world.
It wasn’t much of a town, really, for there was only one narrow street of shops—but they were very nice shops. There was the cake shop with its windows packed with flat fruit tarts and piles of gingerbread cut into every shape imaginable, and the clothes shop with a display of embroidered national costumes. Best of all was the wood-carver’s shop with its rows of carved cuckoo clocks and the old men who opened their mouths wide and cracked nuts in their wooden teeth. At last Father drove up in front of the hospital.
It was only a little hospital, really, but to Annette and Dani it seemed enormous. The patients all lay out on sunny balconies, and the door was wide open. Papa jumped down from the driver’s seat, tied the reins to the fence, and went in. A few minutes later he returned with two men and a stretcher.
Dani, on his stretcher, was laid on a wooden bench in the outpatients’ hall, with Papa sitting at his head and Annette at his feet. The quiet strangeness of the place and the odd, clean smell made them all go very quiet, so Dani watched the nurses instead. They wore long, white aprons and lace caps. Dani thought they looked exactly like the angels in Grandmother’s big picture Bible.
They waited for a very long time. Papa and Annette nodded and dozed. Dani flung his arms above his head and fell into a deep sleep.
He was woken by the doctor, who appeared very suddenly and seemed in a great hurry. He was an elderly man with a large, black beard and a gruff voice. Annette felt afraid of him.
Everything seemed to happen very quickly after that. Dani was hustled off on a trolley to have the bones in his leg photographed, which was interesting, and he wanted to know whether he would be allowed to keep the photograph to hang up in his house. Then he was trundled back, and the doctor pulled the bad leg until Dani screamed with pain. Then the photographs were brought along, not looking in the least like Dani’s legs.
But the doctor seemed pleased with them. He studied them deeply and nodded his head wisely. Then he turned to Papa and remarked, “This child should stay in the hospital. He has broken his leg very badly.”
But Papa refused completely. He was not going to leave his little son to this man with his black beard and rough hands.
“We will look after Dani at home,” he said firmly. “Surely that is possible?”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “It is possible,” he replied, “but I think he would be better here. I cannot come so far. You would have to keep bringing him in.”
“I don’t mind bringing him in,” said Papa stubbornly, and Annette put her little hand into his big one and gave it a squeeze. She, too, wanted Dani at home.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders again and spread out his hands. Dani was once more trundled off by a nurse in a great hurry, and this time he did not come back for more than half an hour.
When at last he was returned to them, he looked sleepy and strange and could remember absolutely nothing but a funny smell. It was Annette who discovered that he had on a big white plaster from his waist downward. She pointed it out to Dani, who stared down at himself in astonishment.
“Why have I got to wear these hard white trousers?” he asked at last. Then, without waiting for a reply, he said that he did not like the doctor’s big, black beard and he wanted to go home.
Annette did not like it either, and they all wanted to go home—Annette because she was hungry, Dani because he was tired, and Papa because he was thinking about his cows.
When the doctor came back with a second photograph, Dani and his family were nowhere to be seen. In the far distance a sprightly horse was making her way home as fast as possible, pulling a hay cart and three passengers behind her. They had completely forgotten to ask when they should bring Dani back again, or for how long he had to wear his plaster.
They reached home at five o’clock and Dani was put to bed on the sofa, so that he wouldn’t feel lonely, and Annette slept on a mattress beside him in case he should wake in the night and want her. Here Dani stayed for weeks with his leg on a pillow, and everything was arranged around him.
Annette stopped going to school altogether for the time being, and almost became Dani’s slave. She told him all her stories over and over again and played games with him all day long. Grandmother cooked wonderful little meals in the kitchen to tempt the appetite of the “poor little sick boy” whose appetite didn’t need tempting at all, for he was almost as jolly and cheery and hungry on his couch as he was off it. When Annette was busy, he would lie flat on his back on the veranda bed and sing like a happy lark.
He certainly had everything to make him happy; the village saw to that. They had loved his pretty, delicate mother who had grown up amongst them, and when she died they were all prepared to love her children—especially Dani, who had eyes as blue as forget-me-nots and a voice like a bird and was altogether as adorable as a five-year-old can be.
Dani, who had always taken love for granted, was not spoiled by it. He was just pleased and excited, for with so many wonderful presents and visits, he hardly missed his freedom at first.
The village children wandered up the mountains in search of the first alpine flowers for him until the table by his bed looked like an alpine flower garden. Because Dani loved to see them, Grandmother cheerfully put up with the noise and the muddy boots until the veranda, out of school hours, became a sort of public playground where Dani was in charge.
Then there was the schoolmaster, who sent fascinating picture books, and the innkeeper who sent brown speckled eggs, and the baker who made golden doughboys with currant eyes and candied peel buttons. He used to slip them in Annette’s bread basket with a wink, and that was why Dani always insisted on unpacking the shopping-basket himself. He never knew what he might find—and whatever it was, he was quite certain it was for him.
But the postman was best of all. The Burnier family hardly ever received a letter, so the postman himself decided to write Dani a picture postcard each week, and trudged up the hill to deliver it himself. He came a different day each week, so every morning Dani got excited in case he should come.
The postman was never in a hurry, and always saw to it that the postcard was at the very bottom of the sack. He enjoyed Dani’s squeals of excitement as he burrowed among the letters and read the names on all the cards in search of his own. And if the post that day was a little marked and crumpled, no one minded or asked questions.