“Well—you better be thinking about your sin then,” Mrs. Anderson retorted.
“My sin,” Julie repeated, and suddenly she saw an inward picture of old Miss Fogg’s gray head upon the floor. “But—but God forgives sins!” she cried poignantly. “He does forgive them. ‘A broken and a contrite heart He will not despise’—the Bible says so!”
“That’s all right about the Bible,” Mrs. Anderson cried savagely. “But you ain’t livin’ in the Bible; you’re livin’ right here in Hart’s Run. An’ I tell you Hart’s Run folks ain’t goin’ to stand for this: they’ll put you out of the church—you see if they don’t.”
“Will they put the Bible out, too?” A voice spoke suddenly behind them.
Turning, they saw that Doctor Franklin had come in through the front shop and was standing looking at them. He was a country doctor, loose-limbed, gaunt, and gray, and old—a man born in Hart’s Run, who had ridden all the roads about it from the old horseback days down to Ford-car times—a man who knew intimately all the physical ills and many of the mental and spiritual ones as well, in a radius of thirty miles—old Doc’ Franklin—old Doc’ Franklin. When people were born he was there, and when they died he was there, gaunt and quiet and natural, very deeply rooted, patient, and unshaken, whether he watched at the gates of birth or at the gates of death.
They did not know how long he had been standing there.
“Well, but look a-here, Doctor,” Mrs. Anderson protested. “Here’s Julie Rose settin’ there foolin’ over that nasty little cat, an’ not caring one thing what folks thinks of her!”
The doctor put out one long finger, and gently rubbed the kitten’s little mouse-colored head. Fed and reassured, it looked up at him now out of the blue loveliness of kitten-eyes, purring happily back and forth, blowing out that occasional, impudent, and care-free bubble.
“Well, that’s sort of like me,” he said. “Other folks have time to calculate who can stay in the church, an’ who’s got to be put out—it’s all too mixed up for me to know. All I know is I’ve got some mighty sick patients up the Easter road, an’ I’ve got to dust out there an’ see ’em.”
Julie looked up into the weather-beaten old face above her. “Look at the kitten’s paw,” she begged. “Is it broken?”