Bankrupt ( part 2)

now he lapsed into their own rude phrasing, and seemed to rest content

in a tranquil certainty that nothing could be better than Tiverton ways and

Tiverton's homely speech.

"Dorcas," he repeated, with all a child's delight in his own cleverness,

"you've had somebody here. I heard ye!"

Dorcas folded the sheet back over the quilt, and laid her hand on his hair,

with all the tenderness of the strong when they let themselves brood over

the weak.

"Only Phoebe, on her way home," she answered, gently. "The doctor

visited her school to-day. She thinks he may drop in to see you to-night. I

guess he give her to understand so."

The minister chuckled.

"Ain't he a smart one?" he rejoined. "Smart as a trap! Dorcas, I 'ain't

finished my sermon. I guess I shall have to preach an old one. You lay me

out the one on the salt losin' its savor, an' I'll look it over."

"Yes, father."

The same demand and the same answer, varied but slightly, had been

exchanged between them every Saturday night for years. Dorcas replied

now without thinking. Her mind had spread its wings and flown out into

the sweet stillness of the garden and the world beyond; it even hastened

on into the unknown ways of guesswork, seeking for one who should be

coming. She strained her ears to hear the beating of hoofs and the rattle

of wheels across the little, bridge. The dusk sifted in about the house,

faster and faster; a whippoorwill cried from the woods. So she sat until

the twilight had vanished, and another of the invisible genii was at hand,

saying, "I am Night."

"Dorcas!" called the parson again. He had been asleep, and seemed now

to be holding himself back from a broken dream. "Dorcas, has your

mother come in yet?""No, father."

"Well, you wake me up when you see her down the road; and then you go

an' carry her a shawl. I dunno what to make o' that cough!" His voice

trailed sleepily off, and Dorcas rose and tiptoed out of the room. She felt

the blood in her face; her ears thrilled noisily. The doctor's, wagon, had

crossed the bridge; now it was whirling swiftly up the road. She stationed

herself in the entry, to lose no step in his familiar progress. The horse

came lightly along, beating out a pleasant tune of easy haste. He was

drawn up at the gate, and the doctor threw out his weight, and jumped

buoyantly to the ground. There was the brief pause of reaching for his

medicine-case, and then, with that firm step whose rhythm she knew so

well, he was walking up the path. Involuntarily, as Dorcas awaited him,

she put her hand to her heart with one of those gestures that seem so

melodramatic and are so real; she owned to herself, with a throb of

appreciative delight, how the sick must warm at his coming. This new

doctor of Tiverton was no younger than Dorcas herself, yet with his erect

carriage and merry blue eye she seemed to be not only of another

temperament, but another time. It had never struck him that they were

contemporaries. Once he had told Phoebe, in a burst of affection and

pitying praise, that he should have liked Miss Dorcas for a maiden aunt.

"Good evening," he said, heartily, one foot on the sill. "How's the

patient?"

At actual sight of him, her tremor vanished, and she answered very

quietly,--

"Father's asleep. I thought you wouldn't want he should be disturbed; so I

came out."

The doctor took off his hat, and pushed back his thick, unruly hair.

"Yes, that was right," he said absently, and pinched a spray of

southernwood that grew beside the door. "How has he seemed?"

"About as usual."

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