It was a Sunday morning, and the smile of a balmy spring day lay over every visible object, filling the ambient air with a translucent message that no human mind could interpret. It was as though an infinite God were speaking to eyes and ears too coarsely fashioned to fully see and hear.
The whole was conducive to the doctor's feeling of restfulness and content and good-will to every human being. He liked the young minister who was seated in the high-backed rosewood chair behind the white pulpit, holding a massive Bible on his slender knees, a look of consecration to a sacred cause in his brown eyes. There was an assuring augury that spoke well for the youth of the town in the spectacle of the choir—the young men in their best clothes, and the young women in their flower-like dresses and plumed and ribboned hats.
His gaze was drawn perforce to the face of the young organist, who sat staring listlessly over the top of her hymn-book. She had a face and form of rare beauty and grace. Her features were most regular; her skin clear; her eyes were large, long-lashed, dreamy, and of the color of violets. Her hair was a living mass of silken bronze.
“She looks tired and worried,” was Dearing's half-professional comment. “Perhaps her mother is worse, and she sat up last night. Poor Dora! she has certainly had a lot to contend with since her father died. I'll wait for her after church and ask about her mother.”
The service over, he made his way through the throng down the aisle toward the door. He was quite popular, and there was many a hand to shake and many a warm greeting to respond to, but he finally succeeded in reaching a point in the shaded church-yard which Dora Barry would pass on her way home, and there he waited.
For some unaccountable reason she was almost the last to leave the church, and the congregation had well-nigh dispersed when he saw her coming. He noticed that she kept her glance on the ground, and that her step was slow and languid; he was all but sure, too, that he heard her sigh, and he saw her firm round breast heave tremulously as she neared him.
“Good-morning, Dora,” he said, cheerily; and she started as, for the first time, she noticed his presence.
“Oh!” she exclaimed, a flush forcing itself into the pallor of her really exquisite face. “I thought—that is, I didn't expect to—to see you here, and, and—”
“I have been watching you this morning instead of the preacher,” he said, with a boyish laugh, “and I made up my mind that I'll have to take you in hand. You are burning the candle at both ends, and there is a fire-cracker in the middle. What is the use of being your family doctor if I let you get down sick, when I can prevent it by raking you over the coals? How is your mother? You had to be up last night—I can see it by the streaks under your eyes.”
“No, I wasn't up,” the girl answered. The color had receded from her cheeks, and the abstracted expression which he had noticed in the church began to repossess her wondrous eyes. “She is not quite well yet, but she did not call me at all through the night. Your last prescription did her good; it soothed her pain, and she rested better.”