CHAPTER XXI.
WILLIAM CONSULTS A SAGE
Starting afresh, at a pace wholly uncalled for by time or distance, William Maubray was soon in the silent street of Saxton, with the bright moonlight on one side of it, and the houses and half the road black in shadow on the other.
There was a light in Doctor Drake’s front parlour, which he called his study. The doctor himself was in evidence, leaning upon the sash of the window, which he had lowered, and smoking dreamily from a “church-warden” toward the brilliant moon. It was plain that Miss Letty had retired, and, in his desolation, human sympathy, some one to talk to, ever so little, on his sudden calamity—a friendly soul, who knew Aunt Dinah long and well, and was even half as wise as Doctor Drake was reputed to be, would be a God-send. He yearned to shake the honest fellow’s hand, and his haste was less, and subsided to a loitering pace, as he approached the window, from which he was hailed, but not in a way to make it quite clear what the learned physician exactly wanted.
“I shay—shizzy—shizhte—shizh-shizh-shizhte—V—V—Viator, I shay,” said the doctor—playfully meaning, I believe, Siste Viator.
And Doctor Drake’s long pipe, like a shepherd’s crook was hospitably extended, so that the embers fell out on the highway, to arrest the wayfarer. So William stopped and said:
“What a sweet night—how beautiful, I’m so glad to find you still up, Doctor Drake.”
“Alwayzh—all—alwayzh up,” said the Doctor, oracularly, smiling rather at one side of his cheek, and with his eyes pretty nearly closed, and his long pipe swaying gently, horizontally, over the trottoir; “you’ll look—insh’r pleashure—acquaintensh.”
By this time the doctor, with his disengaged hand, had seized William’s, and his pipe had dropped on the pavement, and was smashed.