"Could I tell him?" William said, after a while.
"I don't see why not," Dr. Lavendar said.
"I suppose I'd have to ask her permission?"
"Nonsense!" said Dr. Lavendar.
That talk between the physician of the soul and the physician of the body happened on the very night when John Fenn, in his study in Perryville, with Mary dozing on his knee, threw over, once and for all, what he had called "submission" and made up his mind to get his girl! The very next morning he girded himself and walked forth upon the Pike toward Henry Roberts's house. He did not take Mary with him,—but not because he meant to urge salvation on Miss Philly! As it happened, Dr. King, too, set out upon the Perryville road that morning, remarking to Jinny that if he had had his wits about him that night in November, she would have been saved the trip on this May morning. The trip was easy enough; William had found a medical pamphlet among his mail, and he was reading it, with the reins hanging from the crook of his elbow. It was owing to this method of driving that John Fenn reached the Roberts house before Jinny passed it, so she went all the way to Perryville, and then had to turn round to follow on his track.
"Brother went to see Miss Philly, and he wouldn't take me," Mary complained to William King, when he drew up at the minister's door; and the doctor was sympathetic to the extent of five cents for candy comfort.
But when Jinny reached the Roberts gate Dr. King saw John Fenn down in the garden with Philippa. "Ho-ho!" said William. "I guess I'll wait and see if he works out his own salvation." He hitched Jinny, and went in to find Philippa's father, and to him he freed his mind. The two men sat on the porch looking down over the tops of the lilac-bushes into the garden, where they could just see the heads of the two young, unhappy people.
"It's nonsense, you know," said William King, "that Philly doesn't take that boy. He's head over heels in love with her."
"She is not attached to him in any such manner," Henry Roberts said; "I wonder a little at it, myself. He is a good youth."
The doctor looked at him wonderingly; it occurred to him that if he had a daughter he would understand her better than Philly's father understood her. "I think the child cares for him," he said; then, hesitatingly, he referred to John Fenn's sickness. "I suppose you know about it?" he said.