“Yes—she’s a Quaker,” sighed John Rem, regretting for the first time his stormy life.
Bell-Bell, as a woman will, veered the moment he had come to her point of view.
“She is a woman, John, dear, and sometimes a woman likes that in a man—if it is honest—as yours is. Now run away. I have been indiscreet. And married six years, too. Go!”
IV
THE FIDDLING OF FORTUNE
Fortune fiddled favorably for the young physician. The next day it rained, and as he was leisurely getting down from the uptown train, a little exclamation arrested him, and, withal, two hands were planted in the middle of his back and clutched there wildly. Turning quickly John Rem looked again into the calyxlike bonnet.
It was plain that even in the distress of her accident she had recognized him, as well as that she meant to be haughty—in a Quakerish way. She did decline his assistance. But it was really at such moments as this that what was finest in Rem came out.
“You are injured,” he said, with gravity and strength, “and I must help you. I am a doctor.”
Without more ado he carried her to the women’s room in the station, and with the help of the matron attended to her injury—which was slight.
However, she was glad to lean on his arm as he led her to the street car which she insisted upon taking to Bell-Bell’s, and while this had happened to him often before, he did not remember that he had had such interest in the proceeding. While she, when he had left her alone in the car, shook her head at herself accusingly, as she said:
“Entirely too glad—entirely—to be carried!”