"Where you g-going, dad?" she stammered, unabashed.
"To Judge Hollis's. Get down this minute!"
"What for?"
"Somebody's sick. Get down, I say!"
Instead of getting down, she got in, coming straight through the small window, and arriving in a tangle of pink and white at his side.
The doctor heaved a prodigious sigh. As
a colonel of the Confederacy he had exacted strict discipline and unquestioning obedience, but he now found himself ignominiously reduced to the ranks, and another Fenton in command.
At Hollis Farm the judge met them at the gate. He was large and loose-jointed, with the frame of a Titan and the smile of a child. He wore a long, loose dressing-gown and a pair of slippers elaborately embroidered in green roses. His big, irregular features were softened by an expression of indulgent interest toward the world at large.
"Good morning, doctor. Howdy, Nettie. How are you all this morning?"
"Who's sick?" growled the doctor as he hitched his horse to the fence.