“It’s been very pleasant to meet you,” he said. “Is your stay to be long?”
“Several weeks, I believe. Are you really going that way, Mr. Black—or don’t you venture to walk down the street with any members of your congregation except men?”
He smiled. “I am really going this way, Miss Fitch—thank you! Would you care to know where?”
“To Doctor Burns—with your arm, I suppose. Is it very painful?”
“It’s doing very well. Isn’t this a magnificent day? I hope you’ll have a pleasant walk.”
“I can hardly help it, thank you—I’m so fond of walking—which Nan Lockhart isn’t—hard luck for me! Good-bye—and I shall not soon forget what I heard this morning.”
Her parting smile was one to remember—not a bit of pique that he hadn’t responded to her obvious invitation—no coquetry in it either, just charming friendliness, exceedingly disarming. As he turned away, striding off in the opposite direction from that which he naturally would have taken, he was frowning a little and saying to himself that it was going to be rather more difficult to keep the old guard up in a place like this than it had been in his country parish. His good Scottish conscience told him that though in deciding on the instant to make Doctor Burns a visit he had committed himself to something he didn’t want to do at all—go and bother the difficult doctor with his shoulder when it wasn’t necessary—he must do it now just the same, to square the thing. Heavens and earth—why shouldn’t he walk down the street with a beautiful young woman in white if she happened to be going his way, instead of putting himself out to go where he hated to, just to avoid her? Not that he cared to walk with her—he didn’t—he preferred not to. And the doctor would think him a weakling, after all, if he came to him complaining, as was the truth, that his shoulder was aching abominably, and his head to match, and that his pulse seemed to be jumping along unpleasantly. Well——
Just then R. P. Burns went by in his car at a terrific and wholly inexcusable speed, evidently rushing out of town. Black, recognizing him, breathed a sigh of relief. But he went around seven blocks to get back to the Manse without a chance of meeting anybody in white. At a very distant sight of anybody clothed all in white he turned up the first street, and this naturally lengthened his trip. So that when he was finally within the Manse’s sheltering walls he was very glad to give up bluffing for the day, and to stretch himself upon the leather couch in the study where that morning he had doggedly refused an anæsthetic. He rather wished he had one now! Confound it—he felt that he had been a fool more than once that day. Why should ministers have to act differently from other men, in any situation whatever? He made up his mind that the next time he climbed out on a slippery roof on a Sunday morning—well, he would do it if he wanted to! But the next time he turned up a side street to avoid anybody—or changed his direction because anybody was going the same way——
When he woke an hour later it was because his shoulder really was extremely sore and painful. But he wouldn’t have called Burns if he had known that that skillful surgeon could take away every last twinge. Anyhow—Burns had shaved him that morning! There was that that was good to remember about the day. Sometime—he would come closer to the red-headed doctor than that!