The next morning, about four o’clock, Dr. Tibbitt awoke with a troubled mind. He had driven home after midnight from a late call, and he had had an uneasy fancy that he saw a great shadowy bulk ambling along in the mist-hid fields by the roadside. He jumped out of bed and went to the window. Below him, completely covering Mrs. Pennypepper’s nasturtium bed, her prehensile trunk ravaging the early chrysanthemums, stood Zenobia, swaying to and fro, the dew glistening on her seamed sides beneath the early morning sunlight. The Doctor hastily dressed himself and slipped downstairs and out, to meet this Frankenstein’s-monster of affection.
There was but one thing to do. Zenobia would follow him wherever he went—she rushed madly through Mrs. Pennypepper’s roses to greet him—and his only course was to lead her out of the town before people began to get up, and to detain her in some remote meadow until he could get her keeper to come for her and secure her by force or stratagem. He set off by the least frequented streets, and he experienced a pang of horror as he remembered that his way led him past the house of his one professional rival in Sagawaug. Suppose Dr. Pettengill should be coming home or going out as he passed!
He did not meet Dr. Pettengill. He did meet Deacon Burgee, who stared at him with more of rage than of amazement in his wrinkled countenance. The Deacon was carrying a large bundle of embroidered linen and flannel, that must have been tied up in a hurry.
“Good morning, Deacon,” the Doctor hailed him, with as much ease of manner as he could assume. “How’s Mrs. Burgee?”
“She’s doin’ fust rate, no thanks to no circus doctors!” snorted the Deacon. “An’ if you want to know any thing further concernin’ her health, you ask Dr. Pettengill. He’s got more sense than to go trailin’ around the streets with a parboiled elephant behind him, a-frightening women-folks a hull month afore the’r time.”
“Why, Deacon!” cried the Doctor, “what—what is it?”
“It’s a boy,” responded the Deacon, sternly; “and it’s God’s own mercy that ’twa’n’t born with a trunk and a tail.”
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