The day on which they looked each other in the eye first was on a Sunday morning, rather early. Black had done a perfectly foolhardy thing. It was a late June day, and the cherries in a certain tree just outside his bathroom window were blood-red ripe and tempting. Fresh from his cold tub—clad in shirt and trousers, unshaven—his mouth watering at the thought of eating cherries before breakfast, he climbed out of the window upon the sloping roof of the side porch, and let himself down to the edge to reach the cherries. He never knew how the fool thing happened, really; the only thing he did know was that he slipped suddenly upon the edge of the roof, wet with an early morning shower, and fell heavily to the ground below, striking on his right shoulder. And then, presently, he was sitting at the telephone in his study, addressing R. P. Burns, M.D., in terms which strove to be casual, inviting him to make a morning call at the manse.
“I’d come over myself,” he explained, “but I’m ashamed to say I’m a trifle shaky.”
“Naturally,” replied the crisp voice at the other end of the wire. “Go and lie down till I get there.”
“Please have your breakfast first,” requested Black, struggling hard to master a growing faintness. Whatever he had done to his shoulder, it hurt rather badly, though he didn’t mind that so much as the idea of disgracing himself in Burns’ eyes by going white and flabby over what was probably a trivial injury. To be sure he couldn’t use his arm, but it didn’t occur to him that he had actually dislocated that shoulder by so trifling a means as a slip from the manse roof. The manse roof, of all places! It wasn’t built for incumbent ministers to go upon, between a bath and a shave, and tumble from like a little boy—and on a Sunday morning, too!
The answer Red gave to Black’s suggestion that he have breakfast before coming resembled a grunt more than anything else. Black couldn’t determine whether the red-headed doctor meant to do it or not. The question was settled within five minutes by the arrival of Red, who came straight in at the open manse door, followed the call Black gave, “In here, please—at your left,” and appeared in the study doorway, surgical bag in his hand, and a somewhat grim expression—with which Black had already become familiar at a distance—upon his lips. Black sat in his red-cushioned wooden rocker, that most incongruous piece of furniture in the midst of the black walnut dignity of the manse study, and in it his appearance suggested that of a sick boy who has taken refuge in his mother’s arms. Indeed, it may have been with somewhat of that feeling that he had chosen it as the place in which to wait the coming of aid. Anyhow, his face, under its unshaven blur of beard, looked rather white, though his voice was steady.
“Mighty sorry to bother you at this hour, Doctor Burns,” he began, but was interrupted.
“Didn’t I tell you to lie down? What’s the use of sitting up and getting faint?”
“I’m all right.”
“Yes, I see! All alone here? Thought you had a housekeeper.” Red was opening up his bag and laying out supplies as he spoke.
“I have. She’s gone home for over Sunday.”