“Yes, you! You’re the kind of cynic who’d sit up all night with a preacher or any other man you happened to hate, and save his life, and then floor him the first time you met him afterward by telling him you hadn’t any bill against him because you weren’t a vet’rinary and didn’t charge for treating donkeys.”
“Call that a joke—or an insult?” growled Red Pepper; then laughed and switched the subject.
But next Sunday he did not see fit to get to church at all, and on the following Sunday he couldn’t have done it if he’d tried, not having a minute to breathe in for himself while fighting like a fiend to keep the breath of life in a fellow-human. And between times he caught not a sight of Robert Black, who, however, caught several sights of him. R. P. Burns was in the habit of driving with his face straight ahead, to avoid bowing every other minute to his myriad acquaintances and patients. Though Black tried very hard more than once to catch his eye when passing him close by the curb, he had a view only of the clean-cut profile, the lips usually close set, the brows drawn over the intent eyes. For Red was accustomed to think out his operative cases while on the road, and when a man is mentally making incisions, tying arteries, and blocking out the shortest cut to a cure, he has little time to be recognizing passing citizens, not to mention a preacher whom he persists in considering too much of a “kid” for his taste, in the pulpit or out of it.
But Black, as you have been told, was of Scottish blood, and a Scot bides his time. Black meant to know Red, and know him well. He was pretty sure that the way to know him was not to go and hang around his office, or to call upon his wife with Red sure to be away—as Black discovered he always was, in ordinary calling hours. He knew he couldn’t go and lay his hand on Red’s shoulder at a street corner and tell him he wanted to know him. In fact, neither these nor any other of the ordinary methods of bringing about an acquaintance with a man as a preliminary to a friendship seemed to him to promise well. The best he could do was to wait and watch an opportunity, and then—well—if he could somehow do something to help Red out in a crisis, or even to serve him in some really significant way without making any fuss about it, he felt that possibly the thing he desired might come about. Meanwhile—that blow over the heart which he had received at the first sight of the big red-headed doctor continued to make itself felt. Therefore, while Black went with a will at all the new duties of his large parish, and made friends right and left—particularly with his men, because he liked men and found it easier to get on with them than with women—he did not for a day relax his watch for the time when he should send a counter blow in under the guard which he somehow felt was up against him, or forget to plan to make it a telling one when he should deliver it.
CHAPTER II
HEADLINES
“HARPS and voices!” ejaculated Robert Black, quite unconscious of the source of his poetic expletive, “how are my poor little two hundred and thirty-one books going to make any kind of a showing here?”
Small wonder that he looked dismayed. He had just caught his first sight of the dignified manse study, with its long rows of empty black walnut bookcases stretching, five shelves high, across three sides of the large room. The manse, fortunately for a bachelor, was furnished as to the main necessities of living, but it wanted all the details which go to make a home. Though the study contained a massive black walnut desk and chair, a big leather armchair, a luxurious leather couch, and a very good and ecclesiastically sombre rug upon its floor, it seemed bare enough to a man who had lately left a warm little room of nondescript furnishing but most homelike atmosphere. To tell the truth, Black was feeling something resembling a touch of homesickness which seemed to centre in an old high-backed wooden rocking-chair cushioned with “Turkey red.” He was wondering if he might send for that homely old chair, and if he should, how it would look among these dignified surroundings. He didn’t care a picayune how it might look—he decided that he simply had to have it if he stayed. Which proved that it really was homesickness for his country parish which had attacked him that morning. Why not? Do you think him less of a man for that?
“Oh, yours’ll go quite a way!” young Tom Lockhart assured him cheerfully. “And you can use the rest of the space for magazines and papers.”
“Thanks!” replied Black, rather grimly grateful for this comforting suggestion. He and the twenty-year-old son of his hostess had become very good friends in the two days which had elapsed since Black’s arrival. He had an idea that Tom was going to be a distinct asset in the days to come. The young man’s fair hair and blue eyes were by no means indicative of softness—being counteracted by a pugnacious snub nose, a chin so positive that it might easily become a menace, and a grin which decidedly suggested impishness.
“I’ll help unpack these, if you like.”