CHAPTER VIII
AN UNEXPECTED MEETING
If Bar Vernon’s companion in the carriage during his ride up-town that morning had been Judge Danvers, instead of Dr. Manning, he would doubtless have been subjected to a sort of conversational “cross-examination.”
Indeed, he had half expected something of the sort, but the worthy doctor having fairly got rid of his pecuniary load and the troubles connected with it, had mentally gone back to his patients and was not a whit more talkative than his inborn politeness demanded of him.
Indeed, on arriving at the house, the doctor only waited to introduce Bar to Mrs. Manning, after a very brief talk with that lady in an inner room, and tell her to “send for Val,” and then he was off to the reception of his long-delayed “callers” and the performance of his daily routine of healing duty.
Bar’s previous experiences had led him into all sorts of places, good and bad, but never before had he seen the interior of a home like that, so full of all the appliances which modern invention and the refinements of human art have provided for wealth and culture.
It was a sort of new world to him, and he found its unaccustomed atmosphere more than a little oppressive at first.
Even Mrs. Manning, with her gentle face, her beautiful gray hair and her kindly, easy, perfectly well-bred manners, seemed to him so like a being from another sphere, that her presence made him uneasy.
She understood him better than he imagined, however, and although she had plenty of questions in her mind, she considerately postponed them for a more convenient season.
“It’s very wonderful,” thought Bar. “To think of that pocketbook business bringing about all this! But I wonder who Val is?”