Outside in the bleak bitter street, the Doctor laid his hand on my shoulder. He winked his eyes rapidly. "Father," said he, earnestly, "when I witness such a thing as we've seen this morning, I do not lose faith. I gain it." And he gripped me heartily with his big gloved hand. "Tell John Flint," he added, "that sometimes a rag doll is a mighty big thing for a man to have to his credit." Then he was gone, with a tear freezing on his cheek.
"Angels," John Flint had said more than once, "are not middle-aged doctors with shoulders on them like a barn-door, and ribs like a dray; angels don't have bald heads and wear a red tie and tan shoes. But I'd pass them all up, from Gabriel down, wings and tailfeathers, for one Walter Westmoreland."
I would, too. And I walked along, thinking of what I had just witnessed; sensing its time value. To those slight and fragile things which had, for John Flint, outweighed the scales of evil—a gray moth, a butterfly's wing, a bird's nest—I added a child's fair hair, and a rag doll that was going to sleep with its ma.
There were but few people on the freezing streets, for folks preferred to stay indoors and hug the fire. Fronting the wind, I walked with a lowered head, and thus collided with a lady who turned a corner at the same time I did.
"Don't apologize, Padre," said Mary Virginia, for it was she. "It was my fault—I wasn't looking where I was going."
"Are you by any chance bound for the Parish House? Because my mother will be on her way to a poor thing that's just lost her only child. Where have you been these past weeks? I haven't seen you for ages."
"Oh, I've been rather busy, too, Padre. And I haven't been quite well—" she hesitated. I thought I understood. For, possibly from some servant who had overheard Mrs. Eustis expostulating with her daughter, the news of Mary Virginia's unannounced engagement had sifted pretty thoroughly throughout the length and breadth of Appleboro; a town where an unfledged and callow rumor will start out of a morning and come home to roost at night with talons and tailfeathers.
That Mary Virginia had all James Eustis's own quiet will-power, everybody knew. She would not, perhaps, marry Laurence in the face of her mother's open opposition. Neither would she marry anybody else to please her mother in defiance of her own heart. There was a pretty struggle ahead, and Appleboro took sides for and against, and settled itself with eager expectancy to watch the outcome.
So I concluded that Mary Virginia had not been having a pleasant time. Indeed, it struck me that she was really unwell. One might even suspect she had known sleepless nights, from the shadowed eyes and the languor of her manner.
Just then, swinging down the street head erect, shoulders square, the freezing weather only intensifying his glowing fairness, came Howard Hunter. The man was clear red and white. His gold hair and beard glittered, his bright blue eyes snapped and sparkled. He seemed to rejoice in the cold, as if some Viking strain in him delighted in its native air.