As Patrick Henry Said
THE UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES THAT LED DR. JOE TO CHANGE SOME OF HIS IDEAS ON THE SUBJECT OF PERSONAL LIBERTY
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
“MEAN to tell me she won’t let you go?” demanded Dr. Joe, in his big voice.
“No,” said young Bennett stoutly, “I don’t mean to tell you anything of the sort. Of course she’d let me go; only, if I did, there’d be no one—well, no one to look after the furnace or—”
“Merciful powers!” said Dr. Joe, staring at his friend in pity and wonder. “So that’s what it’s done to you!” he thought. “Can’t take two weeks off for a hunting trip with your old friend! Can’t call your soul your own!”
He was determined not to say a word of this, though.
“If the man’s happy,” he thought, “the thing for me is to be tactful.”
And no one could have convinced him that he was not tactful. He got up, a formidable figure of a man, more than six feet in height and stalwart in proportion. He was under thirty-five, yet no one ever spoke of him as a young man, any more than people called him a handsome man, in spite of the fine regularity of his massive features. He was simply Dr. Joe. There was no one like him.