“Sent for you?” roared Mr. Blake. “Ah, doctor, doctor!”
“She sent for me because she had heart trouble,” returned the doctor, indignantly. The lady's name was never mentioned between them.
The rector laughed until the tears started.
“Ah, you're a success with the ladies,” he exclaimed, as he drew out a neatly ironed handkerchief and shook it free from its folds, “and no wonder—no wonder! We'll be having an epidemic of heart trouble next.” Then, as he saw the doctor wince beneath his jest, his kindly heart reproached him, and he gravely turned to politics and the dignity of nations.
The two friends were faithful Democrats, though the rector always began his very forcible remarks with: “A minister knows nothing of politics, and I am but a minister of the Gospel. If you care, however, for the opinion of an outsider—”
As for the Major, he had other leanings which were a source of unending interest to them all. “I am a Whig, not from principle, but from prejudice, sir,” he declared. “The Whig is the gentleman's party. I never saw a Whig that didn't wear broadcloth.”
“And some Democrats,” politely protested the doctor, with a glance at his coat.
The Major bowed.
“And many Democrats, sir; but the Whig party, if I may say so, is the broadcloth party—the cloth stamps it; and besides this, sir, I think its 'parts are solid and will wear well.'”
Now when the Major began to quote Mr. Addison, even the rector was silent, save for an occasional prompting, as, “I was reading the Spectator until eleven last night, sir,” or “I have been trying to recall the lines in The Campaign before. 'Twas then great Marlborough's mighty soul was proved.”