At this Mr. Rooper simply shrugged his shoulders. The question of ready money or credit did not trouble him.
At this moment a man in a low phaeton, drawn by a stout gray horse, passed the tavern.
“Who’s that?” asked Asaph, who knew everybody in the village.
“That’s Doctor Wicker,” said Thomas. “He lives over at Timberley. He ‘tended John Himes in his last sickness.”
“He don’t practise here, does he?” said Asaph. “I never see him.”
“No; but he was called in to consult.” And then the speaker dropped again into cogitation.
After a few minutes Asaph rose. He knew that Thomas Rooper had a slow-working mind, and thought it would be well to leave him to himself for a while. “I’ll go home,” said he, “and ‘tend to my chores, and by the time you feel like comin’ up and takin’ a smoke with me under the chestnut-tree, I reckon you will have made up your mind, and we’ll settle this thing. Fer if I have got to go back to Drummondville, I s’pose I’ll have to pack up this afternoon.”
“If you’d say pack off instead of pack up,” remarked the other, “you’d come nearer the facts, considerin’ the amount of your personal property. But I’ll be up there in an hour or two.”
When Asaph came within sight of his sister’s house he was amazed to see a phaeton and a gray horse standing in front of the gate. From this it was easy to infer that the doctor was in the house. What on earth could have happened? Was anything the matter with Marietta? And if so, why did she send for a physician who lived at a distance, instead of Doctor McIlvaine, the village doctor? In a very anxious state of mind Asaph reached the gate, and irresolutely went into the yard. His impulse was to go to the house and see what had happened; but he hesitated. He felt that Marietta might object to having a comparative stranger know that such an exceedingly shabby fellow was her brother. And, besides, his sister could not have been overtaken by any sudden illness. She had always appeared perfectly well, and there would have been no time during his brief absence from the house to send over to Timberley for a doctor.
So he sat down under the chestnut-tree to consider this strange condition of affairs. “Whatever it is,” he said to himself, “it’s nothin’ suddint, and it’s bound to be chronic, and that’ll skeer Thomas. I wish I hadn’t asked him to come up here. The best thing for me to do will be to pretend that I have been sent to git somethin’ at the store, and go straight back and keep him from comin’ up.”