“Well, well,” said Mr. Hamblin, laboriously rising and putting his spectacles into their silver case,—for it was supper-time,—“joking one side, if Uncle Capen never did set the pond afire, we 'd all rather take his chances to-day, I guess, than those of some smarter men.”
At which Mr. Snell turned red; for he was a very smart man and had just failed,—to everybody's surprise, since there was no reason in the world why he should fail,—and had created more merriment for the public than joy among his creditors, by paying a cent and a half on the dollar.
“Come in; sit down,” said Dr. Hunter, as the young minister appeared at his office door; and he tipped back in his chair, and put his feet upon a table. “What's the news?”
“Doctor,” said Mr. Holt, laughing, as he laid down his hat and took an arm-chair; “you told me to come to you for any information. Now I want materials for a sermon on old Mr. Capen.”
The Doctor looked at him with a half-amused expression, and then sending out a curl of blue smoke, he watched it as it rose melting into the general air.
“You don't smoke, I believe?” he said to the minister.
Holt smiled and shook his head.
The Doctor put his cigar back into his mouth, clasped one knee in his hands, and fixed his eyes in meditation on a one-eared Hippocrates looking down with a dirty face from the top of a bookcase. Perhaps the Doctor was thinking of the two or three hundred complimentary visits he had been permitted to make upon Uncle Capen within ten years.
Presently a smile broke over his face.
“I must tell you, before I forget it,” he said, “how Uncle Capen nursed one of my patients. Years and years ago, I had John Ellis, our postmaster now, down with a fever. One night Uncle Capen watched—you know he was spry and active till he was ninety. Every hour he was to give Ellis a little ice-water; and when the first time came, he took a table-spoonful—there was only a dim light in the room—and poured the ice-water down Ellis's neck. Well, Ellis jumped, as much as so sick a man could, and then lifted his finger to his lips: 'Here 's my mouth,' said he. 'Why, why,' said Uncle Capen, 'is that your mouth? I took that for a wrinkle in your forehead.”