“You know Mrs. Pepper will never desert any one in trouble.” The little doctor slapped the whip into its socket and glared at her through his big horn spectacles.
“There’s Polly doing her best to keep things together,” cried Mrs. Henderson; “’twould go to your heart, Dr. Fisher, to see her!”
“It’s gone to my heart a good many times,” said the little doctor, relapsing into gloom again, “to see her. But what can we do? There isn’t a woman fit to take care of Miss Babbitt, who’d be willing to go.”
“There’s Mary Pote,” said the parson’s wife suddenly with a brightening face.
“Mary Pote?—well, Miss Parrott owns her, soul and body.” Dr. Fisher set his big spectacles straighter on his nose and glared at the parson’s wife worse than ever.
“’Twouldn’t do any harm to try,” said Mrs. Henderson. “Maybe Miss Parrott would let her go.”
The little doctor sniffed scornfully. “Well, will you try?”
Mrs. Henderson looked off to the distant fields, an awful feeling at her heart. Then she swallowed hard. “Yes, I will,” she said, “if I can get over to Miss Parrott’s.”
“No trouble about that,” cried little Dr. Fisher joyfully. “Hop right in, Mrs. Henderson,” and before her resolution had time to cool, there she was in the doctor’s gig and well along on the way to the estate of the aristocratic Miss Parrott.
When the gig turned into the handsome stone gateway, the parson’s wife had all she could do to keep from jumping out over the wheel. Suppose she should anger the only rich parishioner of her husband’s! But she was there on the big stone steps, and the butler was opening the heavy oaken door. There was nothing to do but to go in, Dr. Fisher driving off to call for her later. And presently she was ushered into the long drawing-room, with its rich carpeting, its ancestral furniture and portraits, all shrouded in the gloom of an apartment little used, and left to her wildly beating heart for the only sound to entertain her.