Ethel had a good laugh over it when they had left and cried: "He had his nerve, anyhow. Walking up here with a nigger doctor, the idea! I wish papa had been home, he'd have fixed him proper! Papa has never had one of those in his house, indeed not. No nigger doctor has ever attended any of us, and never will as long as papa has anything to do with it!"
Glavis finally succeeded in getting a hearing. By pleading and begging, he finally secured Ethel's consent to allow him to bring Baptiste to the house and sit near his wife for just thirty minutes—but no more. He did not apprise Baptiste of this fact nor of the time limit, but caught him by the arm and led him to the house as though he were a privileged character. He took notice of the clock when he entered, because he knew that Ethel, who was upstairs had done so. And he was very careful during the time to keep his eyes upon the clock. He knew that Ethel would appear at the expiration of thirty minutes and start her disagreeableness, so at the end of that time he quietly led Baptiste away after he had been allowed only to look at his wife, who was like a Sphinx from the careful dressing down she had had before and preparatory to his coming.
So, having carried out what he considered a bit of diplomacy, Glavis was relieved. Baptiste could expect no more of him, and so it ended.
Ethel wrote her father a cheerful letter and stated that that "hardheaded rascal" had been there from the West; but that Orlean had declined to see him but once, and had refused to go back at all, whereupon her father smiled satisfactorily.
Jean Baptiste returned to the West, defeated and downcast. He had for the first time in his life, failed in an undertaking. He had never known such before, he could not understand. But he was defeated, that was sure. Perhaps it was because he was not trained to engage in that particular kind of combat. He had been accustomed to dealing with men in the open, and was not prepared to counter the cunning and finesse of his newly acquired adversaries.
Over him it cast a gloom; it cast great, dark shadows, and in the days that followed the real Jean Baptiste died and another came to live in his place. And that one was a hollow-cheeked, unhappy, nervous, apprehensive creature. He regarded life and all that went with it dubiously; he looked into the elements above him, and said that the world had reached a time whence it would change. The air would change, the earth would become hot, and rain would not fall and that drought would cover all the land, and the settlers would suffer. And so feeling, it did so become, and in the following chapter our story will deal with the elements, and with how the world did change, and how drought came, and what followed.
CHAPTER VII
A GREAT ASTRONOMER
NOT LONG AGO a man died who had made astronomy a specific study for sixty years. He knew the planets, Mars and Jupiter, and Saturn and all the others. He knew the constellations and the zodiac—in fact he was familiar with the solar system and all the workings of the universe. This man had predicted with considerable accuracy what seasons would be wet, and what seasons would be dry. He also foretold the seasons of warmth and those of cold. And he had said that about every twenty years, the world over would be gripped with drought. This drought would begin in the far north, and would cover the extreme northern portion of the country the first year. The second year it would reach further south, and extend over the great central valleys and be most severe near the northern tier of states. Following, it would go a bit further south the next year, and so on until it would finally disappear altogether.