It was midnight when he found himself walking past the Nesbit home, looking toward it and wondering which of the open windows was nearest to her. He flinched with 73shame when he recollected himself before other houses gazing at other windows, and he unpursed his lips that were wont to whistle a signal, and went down the street shuddering. Then after an impulse in which some good angel of remorse shook his teeth to rouse his soul, he lifted his face to the sky and would have cried in his heart for help, but instead he smiled and went on, trying to think of his speech and resolving mightily to put Laura Nesbit out of his heart finally for the night. He held himself to his high resolve for four or five minutes. It is only fair to say that the white clad figure of the Doctor coming clicking up the street with his cane keeping time to a merry air that he hummed as he walked distracted the young man. His first thought was to turn off and avoid the Doctor who came along swinging his medicine case gayly. But there rushed over Van Dorn a feeling that he would like to meet the Doctor. He recognized that he would like to see any one who was near to Her. It was a pleasing sensation. He coddled it. He was proud of it; he knew what it meant. So he stopped the preoccupied figure in white, and cried, “Doctor–we’re late to-night!”
“Well, Tom, I’ve got a right to be! Two more people in Harvey to-night than were here at five o’clock this afternoon because I am a trifle behindhand. Girl at your partner’s–Joe Calvin’s, and a boy down at Dick Bowman’s!” He paused and smiled and added musingly, “And they’re as tickled down at Dick’s as though he was heir to a kingdom!”
“And Joe–I suppose–not quite–”
“Oh, Joe, he’s still in the barn, I dropped in to tell him it was a girl. But he won’t venture into the house to see the mother before noon to-morrow! Then he’ll go when she’s asleep!”
“Dick really isn’t more than two jumps ahead of the wolf, is he, Doctor?”
“Well,” grinned the elder man, “maybe a jump-and-a-half or two jumps.”
The young man exclaimed, “Say, Doctor! I think it would be a pious act to make the fellows put up fifty dollars for Dick to-night. I’ll just go down and raid a few poker games and make them do it.”
The Doctor stopped him: “Better let me give it to Dick 74if you get it, Tom!” Then he added, “Why don’t you keep Christian hours, boy? You can’t try that Yengst case to-morrow and be up all night!”
“That’s just what I’m out here for, Doctor–to get my head in shape for the closing speech.”
“Well,” sniffed the Doctor, “I wish you no bad luck, but I hope you lose. Yengst is guilty, and you’ve no business–”