Then David went slowly back into the house. He wandered, smiling reminiscently, into the sitting-room. Pausing before the Venus de Milo, he chucked the classic chin.
"Well, old lady," he said gravely, "there's more ways of chokin' a dog besides chokin' him with butter."
XVII
FRIENDSHIP'S MINISTRY
If any man would learn the glory and beauty of a mighty tree we would bid him range the untroubled forest where God's masterpieces stand in rich profusion. But we are wrong. Not there will he learn how precious and how beautiful are the stately oak and the spreading beech and the whispering pine. But let him dwell a summer season through upon some treeless plain or rolling prairie, and there will be formed within him a just and discriminating sense of the healing ministry committed to these mediators between earth and sky.
And men learn friendship best where friends are not. Not when surrounded by strong and loving hearts, but when alone with thousands of indifferent lives, do we learn how truly rich is he who has a friend. To find then one who really cares is to confront in sudden joy a familiar face amid the waste of wilderness.
Alone among indifferent thousands as he alighted from the train, Harvey Simmons turned his steps, the streets somewhat more familiar than before, towards the house where dwelt the only man he knew in all the crowded city. A few enquiries and a half hour's vigorous walking brought him within sight of the doctor's house; he was so intent on covering the remaining distance that two approaching figures had almost passed him by when he heard a voice that had something familiar about it.
"I'll do the best I can, Wallis," the voice was saying, "but I guess we'll have to put the child under chloroform."
Harvey turned a quick glance on the speaker. It was none other than the doctor himself.
"Dr. Horton—is that you, Dr. Horton?" the youth asked timidly.