“Mr. Mills, or Eliph' Hewlitt, as he prefers to be known, is an old schoolmate of James Wilkins, the prominent livery and hotel man of our little burg. Again we welcome him to our midst.”
This was headed, “Eliph' Hewlitt Now a Citizen of Kilo!” and it was all the introduction the little book agent needed—except to Miss Sally. When she read it she turned pale. A book agent living in the very town was more than she could bear.
But there was another item of news that Eliph' left with T. J. that went into the same issue of the TIMES. This stated that Mrs. Smith, of New York, and Miss Susan Bell were visiting Miss Sally Briggs, and T. J. had completed the slight information given him by Eliph' by a call at Miss Sally's. It was after Eliph' had told T. J. that he meant to make his home in Kilo that the enterprising editor suggested Doc Weaver's as a good boarding place, and the little book agent was glad enough to settle himself in a real home, for the Kilo Hotel was hardly more than an annex to the liver, feed and sale stable part of Jim Wilkins' business, and any man with half an eye could see that it was not, as a home for men, to be compared to the comfort with the stable, as a home for horses. Jim would have been the last man in Kilo to expect a visitor to remain in the Kilo Hotel more than two days. Before the end of the day Eliph' had arranged with Mrs. Doc Weaver for board and lodging, and had moved his big valise to the little back room on the second floor, from the low six-paned windows of which he could look out over the cornfield that environed Kilo on that side.
At supper he met Doc Weaver himself, and found him, as Kilo pronounced him, “a ready talker.” Eliph' and Doc Weaver were sitting at the supper table, earnestly engaged in conversation, while the doctor's wife cleared away the dishes, and Eliph' was pouring out the knowledge he had absorbed from Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art. The doctor was having a mental feast. Behind his spectacles his eyes glowed, and in exact ratio, as the doctor's spirits rose, the frown on his wife's forehead deepened.
The doctor had few opportunities for discussing any subjects but the most ordinary. Neighborhood gossip, the weather, the price of corn, were the usual sources of conversation in Kilo, except when an election gave a political tinge to discussions, or when a revival turned all attention to religious matters; but the doctor's mind scorned these limitations, and he found few persons from year's end to year's end to whom he could speak openly on his favorite themes.
To Kilo in general the doctor was something of a mystery. Ordinarily he was the most silent of men, but on occasion, as for instance when he could buttonhole an intelligent stranger, he dissolved into a torrent of words.
Doc Weaver held views. He believed there were other things besides the Republican party and the Methodist Church, and being liberal-minded, he believed all these other things in turn, and he had believed them enthusiastically. He could not help thinking that he was of a little finer clay than Skinner, or Wilkins, or Colonel Guthrie. Kilo considered the doctor one of her peculiar institutions; as Kilo took the ever-joking Toole seriously, so she took the ever serious doctor good-naturedly, but not too seriously. He was “jist Doc Weaver,” and Kilo reserved the right to laugh at him in private, and to brag about him to strangers, and they were apt to “joke” him about his beliefs. As he was sensitive and dreaded the rough raillery of his neighbors, he kept his enthusiasms to himself. He was like an overcharged bottle of soda water.
Eliph' and the doctor were discussing Christian Science and faith cures generally, and when the doctor's wife passed to and fro, catching a phrase now and then, a look of deep anxiety spread over her face, until, as she brushed the crumbs from the red tablecloth, her shoulders seemed to droop in dejection.
When she smoothed the cloth and set the lamp on the mat in the center the doctor glanced at his watch and arose. He buttoned his frock coat over his breast (it was the only frock coat in Kilo), and drew on his driving gloves, holding his hands on a level with his chin. It was a habit, an aristocratic touch, which, like his side-whiskers, detached him from the rest of Kilo. He had once worn a silk hat, but he soon abandoned it for gray felt; for even he saw that a silk hat emphasized his individuality too strongly for comfort. It was a tempting mark for snowballs in winter.
When the doctor had closed the door and stepped from the front porch, his wife sank into a chair.