“Ah!” said Ried, his eyes bright, his face eager; “that is Dr. Everett. Just study him if you want another type of the sort of Christian about whom we have been talking; the grandest man!”
Gracie, shielded by the distance, turned on her stool and studied him. Certainly he did not look much as though he were appointed for early death. What a splendid physique it was!
And how thoroughly wide awake and interested he was in the subject under discussion. Bits of the talk floated back to the two at the piano.
“Oh, he is young,” Dr. Everett was saying; “I hope for returned vigor in time; but there must be long weeks of patience before he will be ready for his old employment.”
“Do you know of whom he is speaking?” Gracie asked.
“I fancy it is that Calkins boy, the one with the broken limb. He is deeply interested in the poor fellow, and is trying to plan employment of some less wearing sort for him, I believe. Dr. Everett is always intensely interested in somebody.”
“Is it always the very poor?”
Alfred laughed.
“Not always. I know several quite well-to-do fellows in whom he keeps a careful oversight; but he is grandly interested in the poor. He is taking rank as one of the most successful physicians in the city, and, of course, he is pressed for time; yet he is so continually at the call of the poor that people begin to speak of him as the poor man's doctor. He told me he was proud of that title.”
At this point the musicians were appealed to to come to the front parlor, and Gracie had opportunity for a nearer study of the man whom she could not help but admire. He was not likely to suffer from a nearer view; at least, not while Gracie was in the mood that then possessed her. He greeted her cordially, and at once brought her into the conversation by appealing to her for a decision, seeming to take it for granted that she was of the same spirit with himself.