Leaving the enslaved Bennett in his office, Dr. Joe drove off about his business. He flew along the quiet country roads in his little car. He would stop before a house and run up the steps. He never rang bells. If a door was locked, he knocked vigorously upon it. If it was not locked, he flung it open and walked in; and he had never yet failed to find a welcome inside. His step was by no means light, yet no one, not even the most querulous and nervous patient, had ever com[Pg 260]plained of that. He was Dr. Joe. He expected every one to be glad to see him, and every one was.
Things went well that morning. All the patients he visited were doing nicely, and the weather was superb—a cool, bright October day. He drove home for lunch in a very cheerful humor. He was contented and hungry.
As he neared his own house, however, a faint cloud came over his satisfaction. He hoped that Mrs. MacAdams, his housekeeper, would not give him that stew again to-day.
“Don’t like to say anything to her,” he thought; “but seems to me we’re having that stew pretty often these days. It’s not—well, it’s all right, of course, but—”
He went up the steps of the veranda and burst open his own front door with a magnificent crash. That was his signal to Mrs. MacAdams to put his lunch on the table.
He did not turn his head in the direction of the waiting room, though he knew that people were in there. His office hours were from two to four, and patients had no business to come at one o’clock. He often said, with vehemence, that he would see no one—absolutely no one—before two o’clock; but he did. He said he would eat his lunch in peace; but he didn’t. He always had to hurry.
So he was going sternly toward the dining room, without even glancing in at the waiting room, when an extraordinary sight arrested him. There was some one sitting in the hall!
This was altogether too much. Bad enough for patients to come long before office hours, and haunt him while he ate his lunch, but to come out into the hall to waylay him!
He gave this person a severe glance. He got in return a glance which somehow disconcerted him—a cool, amused, very steady glance. He stopped short. The intruder was a woman. She was sitting in a high-backed chair, her hands lying extended on the arms, and her feet planted solidly before her, side by side. It was an Egyptian sort of attitude.
There was nothing else about her, however, to suggest old Egypt. That wrinkled, weather-beaten face with the long upper lip, half doleful, half humorous, and those twinkling little gray eyes, were unmistakably Irish; and Dr. Joe had rather a weakness for that race. Moreover, she was shabbily dressed—a thing difficult for him to resist—and her hair was gray. His just resentment vanished.