His fear vanished in a moment. The animal’s intentions were certainly pacific, to put it mildly. He reflected that if he could keep his horse ahead of her, he could toll her around the block and back toward her tent. He had hardly guessed, as yet, the depth of the impression which he had made upon Zenobia’s heart, which must have been a large organ, if the size of her ears was any indication—according to the popular theory.
He was on the very edge of the town, and his road took him by a house where he had a new and highly valued patient, the young wife of old Deacon Burgee. Her malady being of a nature that permitted it, Mrs. Burgee was in the habit of sitting at her window when the Doctor made his rounds, and indicating the satisfactory state of her health by a bow and a smile. On this occasion she fled from the window with a shriek. Her mother, a formidable old lady under a red false-front, came to the window, shrieked likewise, and slammed down the sash.
The Doctor tolled his elephant around the block without further misadventure, and they started up the road toward Zenobia’s tent, Zenobia caressing her benefactor while shudders of antipathy ran over his frame. In a few minutes the keeper hove in sight. Zenobia saw him first, blew a shrill blast on her trumpet, close to the Doctor’s ear, bolted through a snake fence, lumbered across a turnip-field, and disappeared in a patch of woods, leaving the Doctor to quiet his excited horse and to face the keeper, who advanced with rage in his eye.
“What do you mean, you cuss,” he began, “weaning a man’s elephant’s affections away from him? You ain’t got no more morals than a Turk, you ain’t. That elephant an’ me has been side-partners for fourteen years, an’ here you come between us.”
“I don’t want your confounded elephant,” roared the Doctor; “why don’t you keep it chained up?”
“She busted her chain to git after you,” replied the keeper. “Oh, I seen you two lally-gaggin’ all along the road. I knowed you wa’n’t no good the first time I set eyes on yer, a-sayin’ hoodoo words over the poor dumb beast.”
The Doctor resolved to banish “analogy” from his vocabulary.
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