His wife came with him sometimes in the evenings to dinner, and then Mr. Erskine's eyes would dwell on her with a kind of gladness. For now she had a colour in her cheek and a proud look on her face, which had not been there on the day when he had first heard her pray: "O God, help my Hughie!" in the square manse pew.
God had indeed helped Hughie—as He mostly does, through human agency. And Mr. Erskine was happier too. He had found an object in life, and, on the whole, his pupil did him great credit.
He also inserted a clause in his will, which ensures that Hugh and his wife shall not be dependent in their old age upon the goodwill of a faithful but scanty flock.
And as for Hugh Peebles, probable plagiarist, he writes his own sermons now, though he always submits them before preaching to his wise friend up at Barlochan. But it is for his first success that he is always asked when he goes from home. There is a never-failing postscript to any invitation from a clerical brother upon a sacramental occasion: "The congregation will be dreadfully disappointed if you do not give us 'Tadmor in the Wilderness.'"
And Hugh Peebles never disappoints them.
PETERSON'S PATIENT
When I go out on the round of a morning I generally take John with me. John is my "man," and of course it is etiquette that he should drive me to my patients' houses. But sometimes I tell him to put in old Black Bess for a long round-about journey, and then, in that case, I can drive myself.
For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. I honestly believe Bess is more than half a cow, and chews the cud on the sly. So whenever I feel a trifle lazy, I take the outer round and Black Bess, leaving the town and what the ambitious might call its "suburbs" to Dr. Peterson, my assistant. Not that this helps me much in the long run, because I have to keep track of what is going on in Peterson's head and revise his treatment. For, though his zeal and knowledge are always to be counted on, Peterson is apt to be lacking in a certain tact which the young practitioner only acquires by experience.
For instance, to take the important matter of diagnosis, Peterson used to think nothing of standing silent five or ten minutes making up his mind what was the matter with a patient. I once told him about this.
"Why," he replied, with, I must say, some slight disrespect for his senior, "you often do that yourself. You said this very morning that it took you twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to treat Job Sampson's wife for scarlet fever or for diphtheria!"