The truth is, Lawrence was in a delirium of expectancy. He stood, as it were, upon the threshold of an event. The experience which threatened him was altogether a new one; he was in a condition of suspense that was simply torturesome.
This event had been anticipated for some time. By those subtile methods peculiar to her sex, Mary, the wife, had prepared herself for it, and Lawrence, too, had declared ever and anon his readiness to face the ordeal; but, now that the event was close at hand, Lawrence was weak and nervous and pale, and it was evident that Mary would have to confront the event without the hope of any practical assistance from her husband.
"It is all the fault of the moon," muttered Lawrence. "It changed last night, and if I had paid any attention to what Aunt Lizzie and Miss Bettie said I might have expected this trouble to-day. A plague take the moon, I say, and all the ills it brings with its monkeyshines!"
Along the pathway across the meadow meandered three feminine figures attired in the quaint raiment of those remote Colonial times—Mistress Carter, her daughter Mistress Fairfax, and another neighbor, the antique and angular Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster. At sight of Lawrence they groaned, and Miss Culpeper found it necessary to hold her big velvet bag before her face to conceal the blushes of indignation which she felt suffusing her venerable features when she beheld the horrid author of a kind of trouble to which, on account of her years and estate, she could never hope to contribute save as a party of the third part. And oh! how guilty Lawrence looked and how guilty he felt, too, as he sat under his fig tree just then. He dropped his face into his hands and ground his elbows into his knees and indulged in bitter thoughts against the feminine sex in general and against the moon and Miss Dorcas Culpeper, spinster, in particular.
So absorbing were these bitter reflections that, although Lawrence had posted himself under the fig tree for the sole purpose of discovering and of heralding the approach of a certain expected visitor, he was not aware of Dr. Parley's arrival until that important personage had issued from the oak grove, had traversed the brown road, and was dignifiedly stalking his flea-bitten mare through the gateway. Then Lawrence looked up, gave a sickly smile, and bade the doctor an incoherent good-morning. Dr. Parley was sombre and impressive. He seldom smiled. An imperturbable gravity possessed him from the prim black-satin cockade on his three-cornered hat to the silver buckles on his square-toed shoes. In his right hand he carried a gold-headed cane which he wielded as solemnly as a pontiff might wield a sceptre, and as he dismounted from his flea-bitten mare and unswung his ponderous saddlebags he never once suffered the gold head of his impressive cane to lapse from its accustomed position at his nostrils.
"Go right into the house, doctor," said Lawrence, feebly, "I 'll look after the mare. You have n't come any too soon—Mary 's taking on terrible."
It was mean of Dr. Parley, but at this juncture he did really smile—yes, and it was a smile which combined so much malevolent pity and scorn and derision that poor Lawrence felt himself shrivelling up to the infinitesimal dimension of a pea in a bushel-basket. He led the flea-bitten mare to the cherry tree and tied her there. "If you bark that tree I 'll tan you alive," said Lawrence hoarsely, to the champing, frisky creature, for now he hated all animal life from Dr. Parley down, down, down even to the flea-bitten mare. Then, miserable and nervous, Lawrence returned to the arm-chair under the fig tree—and, how wretched he was!
Pretty soon he heard a merry treble voice piping out: "Is ze gockter tum to oo house?" and Lawrence saw little Martha toddling toward him. Little Martha was Mistress Dandridge's baby girl. The Dandridges lived a short way beyond the oak grove, and little Martha loved to visit Uncle Lawrence and Aunt Mary, as she called Lawrence and his wife.
"Yes, Martha," said Lawrence, sadly, "the doctor's come."