“No, sir.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
“Please, sir, may I speak to you a minute?”
“Speak to me?”
“Yes, sir.”
Doctor Prescott wore a massive gold watch-chain festooned across his fine black satin vest. He pulled out before the boy's wondering and perplexed eyes the great gold timepiece attached to it and looked at it. “You must be quick,” said he. “I have to go in five minutes. I will give you five minutes by my watch. Begin.”
But poor little Jerome, thus driven with such a hard check-rein of time, paled and reddened and trembled, and could find no words.
“One minute is gone,” said the doctor, looking over the open face of his watch at Jerome. Something in his glance spurred on the frightened boy by arousing a flash of resentment.
Jerome, standing straight before the doctor, with a little twitching hand hanging at each side, with his color coming and going, and pulses which could be seen beating hard in his temples and throat, spoke and delivered himself of that innocently overreaching scheme which he had propounded to Squire Eben Merritt.
It seems probable that mental states have their own reflective powers, which sometimes enable one to suddenly see himself in the conception of another, to the complete modification of all his own ideas and opinions. So little Jerome Edwards, even while speaking, began to see his plan as it looked to Doctor Prescott, and not as it had hitherto looked to himself. He began to understand and to realize the flaws in it—that he had asked more of Doctor Prescott than he would grant. Still, he went on, and the doctor heard him through without a word.