The boy slowly and reluctantly detached himself from the window-sill, and set the lawnmower on another zigzag journey. His hat, his coat, and his trousers hung limper than ever. He moved wearily, and at the end of the garden he sat down under a cherry-tree to muse on the strange, sad fact that his new employer promised to be not one whit more companionable than old Doc. Williams.
The young doctor finished his work, and went up the stairs three steps at a time, making a commotion that brought Mrs. Munn from her pie-baking in hurried alarm. He washed his hands, resumed his coat, and, leaning out of the window, wished with all his might that he had something to do. He was seized with an honest, pagan desire that some one would get sick, or that there might be an accident in the mill—-just a mild accident, of course; or, better still, that that queer specimen of humanity sitting under his cherry-tree, down there, should be smitten with paralysis. He confessed that this last seemed the most hopeful outlook, then laughed at himself for his monstrous wishes. He seized his hat and ran downstairs. He would go out and explore the village. He must do something, he warned himself, or he would be in danger of rushing into the street and lacerating the first man he met, just for the sake of sewing him up again.
He passed out to the gate. The long, shady village street, bordered by tall, swaying elms, stretched away on either hand, peaceful and deserted. To the new doctor the place looked half asleep, and uncompromisingly healthful. The clear May morning air was filled with a chorus of robins and orioles. A bluebird in the orchard bordering his lawn was singing ecstatically. Far up the street the musical cling-clang of the blacksmith's anvil, and from the depths of the ravine, in the opposite direction, the hum of the sawmill, served only like a lullaby to make the silence more dreamy.
He stepped out upon the boardwalk that ran along the street. Overhead the maples and elms met, making a cool tunnel. In this green canopy nest-building was being carried on, on a great scale and with tremendous commotion. The doctor picked his way carefully along the undulating surface of the sidewalk, for the boards were damp and rotten, and liable to fly up at one end and break a limb; and though he was anxious for a patient, he did not fancy serving in that capacity himself.
The quiet houses, surrounded by their demure gardens, gave no indication that he was being watched from behind many a window-blind. Neither was there any stir to give hint that from the upstairs window of the village shop at the end of the street a telescope was pointing at him, while Granny Long informed the breathless circle about her bed that his necktie was of blue-gray satin, and that his hair was thick and wavy.
Quite unconscious of the sensation he was creating, the new doctor walked on. He passed a tiny white house set in a square garden bright with early blossoms. A little woman, in a faded lilac gown, sat sewing on the porch, and a green parrot, in a cage at her side, stalked to and fro on his perch, muttering sullenly. At sight of the stranger the bird gave an indignant stare, then swung, head downward, from his perch and shouted, "Oh, Lordy, ain't we havin' a slow time!"
The remark so exactly coincided with the new doctor's sentiments that he looked over the cedar hedge at the speaker with a feeling of friendly regard. But the little lilac lady seemed quite of another mind. She sprang up in dismayed haste, scattering thimble and scissors out on the pathway, and, seizing the cage, fled with it indoors.
Gilbert passed on, feeling that there was one creature, at least, in this new place who was in sympathy with him. His eye traveled with satisfaction along the double row of trim houses and neat gardens; they spoke of thrift and prosperity. There was only one exception, the place next to the home of the ennuied parrot. Hens scratched merrily in the midst of desert flower-beds, or nested under the lilac bushes, a handsome goose and gander passed in stately promenade up and down the front veranda, and the whole place had a happy, go-as-you-please air.
The last in the line was the schoolhouse, a big, square building, scarred and worn, standing in the middle of a yard trampled bare of grass, and surrounded by the forlorn skeleton of a fence. From the battered pump in one corner, to the dilapidated woodshed in the other, the whole premises had the appearance of having just weathered a long and terrible siege. The commanding voice of the Duke of Wellington coming through the open windows added to its military suggestiveness.
When he had passed the school the stranger found himself at the end of the village. The row of houses stopped at a rustic bridge spanning a ravine. Away up this valley he could see the tall smokestack of the sawmill, with its waving plume of smoke coming up out of a fairy mass of delicate May foliage. The mill-pond gleamed, green and golden brown, between the willow clumps along its margin. From the dam a stream issued in a little, noisy, silver waterfall. It babbled across the road, under the old bridge, among bracken and mint, and wound this way and that through the deep valley until it lost itself in a swamp far to the south. A hard, beaten path led from the street down into the gold and green depths. It was an alluring path, and Gilbert stepped into it. He slid and stumbled down the steep bank, catching at blossoming dogwood bushes and fragrant cedar boughs. A boyish light came into his eyes as they caught the flash of the tiny river; here green under an overhanging willow, there snow white under a rain of cherry blossoms, now silver as it ran around a shallow curve, and again gold in the sunlight filtered through a tangle of elm boughs and bitter-sweet.