Staggering again to his feet, he made for the front door. With all that was left of his departing powers he managed to open it and to reach the threshold-stone outside, there to confront his three old friends and the crazily welcoming collie.
Then everything had gone black.
Chapter XIX
A MAN AND A MAID AND ANOTHER MAN
“I ’M just as glad Doris wasn’t here to listen to this,” commented Miss Gregg, breaking the awed pause which followed Dr. Lawton’s recital. “For a perfectly innocent and kindly girl she seems to have stirred up no end of mischief. After the manner of perfectly innocent and kindly girls. She’d be the first to grieve over it, of course. But a billion Grief-Power never yet had the dynamic force to lift one ounce of any bad situation one inch in one century.”
“Well,” said Lawton, reaching for his rusty black hat and his rustier black bag, “I’ve wasted too much time already, gabbling here. I must get to my miserable round of calls unless I want my patients to get well before I arrive. Good-by. Clive will be all right now. He has had the absolute rest he needed. He’ll be as good as new in another week or so. It’s lucky all this has happened before Oz had a chance to squander more than about $50,000 of the lad’s fortune. He’ll have enough left to live on in comfort. To marry on, too.”
Off plodded the old gentleman, leaving Thaxton Vail scowling unhappily after him.
“To marry on,” muttered Vail under his breath, not knowing he spoke aloud.
“Yes,” chimed in Miss Gregg brightly. “Enough to marry on. Almost enough to be engaged on. He’s a lucky man!”
“He is,” agreed Vail dully. “And a mighty white man, too. One of the very best.”
“Yes,” assented Miss Gregg with fervor, smiling maliciously on her victim. “One of the very best. Doris thinks so too.”