“Hello, Carey. How did you scent chicken pie so far? And a plum pudding all brown and ready?” Shirley called hospitably.
“It’s my business to find what produces sickness as well as to provide cures,” Carey responded as he stepped from his buggy to tie his horses.
“Take him in the house, Pryor, while I stable his crowbaits,” Jim said, patting one of the doctor’s well groomed horses the while.
“I hope you will stay, too,” Horace Carey said to Pryor Gaines. “I have some important news for Shirley, and you and he are fast friends.”
“The bachelor twins of Grass River,” Pryor Gaines declared. “Jim hasn’t any lungs and I haven’t any heart, so we manage to keep a half a household apiece, and added together make one fairly reputable citizen. I’ll stay if Jim wishes me to, of course.”
“The two most useful men in the community,” Carey declared. “Jim has been father and mother, big brother, and hired girl for half the settlement, while you, you marry and train up and bury. No neighborhood is complete without a couple of well-meaning old bachelors.”
“How about a bachelor M. D.?” Pryor Gaines asked. “I’ve not been able to get in my work on you yet.”
“Purely a necessary evil, the M. D. business,” Carey insisted. “Here’s Jim now. We wait the chicken and plum pudding, Host Shirley.”
Jim’s skill as a cook had not decreased since the day when he prepared Asher Aydelot’s wedding supper, and 150 the three men who sat together at that day’s meal took large enjoyment in this quiet hour together.
“I have a letter for you, Shirley,” the doctor said at last. “It was sent to me some months ago with the request that I give it to you when I had word to do so. I have had word. Here it is.”