CHAPTER XI
When Dr. Lavendar left David at the Stuffed Animal House, he didn't feel, somehow, like going home; the Rectory would be so quiet. It occurred to him that, as he was on the hill, he might as well look in on Benjamin Wright.
He found the old gentleman in his beaver hat and green serge dressing-gown, tottering up and down the weedy driveway in front of his veranda, and repeating poetry.
"O great corrector of enormous times, Shaker of o'er rank states, thou grand decider Of dusty and old titles, that healest with blood—Hello! 'Bout time you came to see me. I suppose you want to get some money out of me for something?"
"Of course; I always want money out of somebody for something. There's a leak in the vestry roof. How are you?"
"How do you suppose I am? At eighty-one, with one foot in the grave!
Ready to jump over a five-barred gate?"
"I'm seventy-two," said Dr. Lavendar, "and I played marbles yesterday."
"Come in and have a smoke," the older man said, hobbling on to the veranda, where four great white columns, blistered and flaked by time, supported a roof that darkened the shuttered windows of the second story.
He led the way indoors to the dining-room, growling that his nigger, Simmons, was a fool. "He says he closes the shutters to keep the flies out; makes the room as dark as a pocket, and there ain't any flies this time of year, anyhow. He does it to stop my birds from singing; he can't fool me! To stop my birds!" He went over to one of the windows and pushed the shutters open with a clatter; instantly a twitter ran from cage to cage, and the fierce melancholy of his old face softened. "Hear that?" he said proudly.
"I ought to come oftener," Dr. Lavendar reproached himself; "he's lonely."