Sowing Seeds in Danny Part 7

"Oh, Clay!" he burst out when he had answered the young man's friendly greeting, "it is an awful thing to lay open a mean man's meanness, and tell him the plain truth about himself."

"It is, indeed," the young doctor answered, "but perhaps it is heroic treatment your man needed, for I would infer that you have been reading the law to someone. Who was it?"

"Sam Motherwell," the minister answered.

"Well, you had a good subject," the doctor said gravely. "For aggravated greed, and fatty degeneration of the conscience, Mr.

Motherwell is certainly a wonder. When that poor English girl took the fever out here, it was hard to convince Sam that she was really sick.

'Look at them red cheeks of hers,' he said to me, 'and her ears ain't cold, and her eyes is bright as ever. She's just lookin' for a rest, I think, if you wuz to ask me.'"

"How did you convince him?"

"I told him the girl would have to have a trained nurse, and would be sick probably six weeks, and then they couldn't get the poor girl off their hands quick enough. 'I don't want that girl dyin' round here,'

Sam said."

"Is Mrs. Motherwell as close as he is?" the minister asked after a pause.

"Some say worse," the doctor replied, "but I don't believe it. She can't be."

The minister's face was troubled. "I wish I knew what to do for them,"

he said sadly.

"I'll tell you something you can do for me," the doctor said sitting up straight, "or at least something you may try to do."

"What is it?" the minister asked.

"Devise some method, suggest some course of treatment, whereby my tried and trusty horse Pleurisy will cease to look so much like a saw-horse.

I'm afraid the Humane Society will get after me."

The minister laughed.

Everybody knew Dr. Clay's horse; there was no danger of mistaking him for any other. He was tall and lean and gaunt. The doctor had bought him believing him to be in poor condition, which good food and good care would remedy. But as the months went by, in spite of all the doctor could do, Pleurisy remained the same, eating everything the doctor brought him, and looking for more, but showing no improvement.

"I've tried everything except egg-nog," the doctor went on, "and pink pills, and I would like to turn over the responsibility to someone else. I think perhaps his trouble must be mental--some gnawing sorrow that keeps him awake at night. I don't mind driving Pleurisy where people know me and know that I do feed him occasionally, but it is disconcerting when I meet strangers to have kind-looking old ladies shake their heads at me. I know what they're thinking, and I believe Pleurisy really enjoys it, and then when I drive past a farmhouse to see the whole family run out and hold their sides is not a pleasure.

Talk about scattering suns.h.i.+ne! Pleurisy leaves a trail of merriment wherever he goes."

"What difference does it make what people think when your conscience is clear. You do feed your horse, you feed him well, so what's the odds,"

inquired the Rev. Hugh Grantley, son of granite, child of the heather, looking with lifted brows at his friend.

"Oh, there you go!" the doctor said smiling. "That's the shorter catechism coming out in you--that Scotch complacency is the thing I wish I had, but I can't help feeling like a rogue, a cheat, an oppressor of the helpless, when I look at Pleurisy."

"Horace," the minister said kindly, with his level gray eyes fixed thoughtfully on his friend's handsome face, "a man in either your calling or mine has no right to ask himself how he feels. Don't feel your own pulse too much. It is disquieting. It is for us to go on, never faltering and never looking behind."

"In other words, to make good, and never mind the fans," the doctor smiled. Then he became serious. "But Grantley, I am not always so sure I am right as you are. You see a sinner is always a sinner and in danger of d.a.m.nation, for which there is but one cure, but a sick man may have quinsy or he may have diphtheria, and the treatment is different. But oh! Grantley, I wish I had that Scotch-gray confidence in myself that you have. If you were a doctor you would tell a man he had typhoid, and he'd proceed to have it, even if he had only set out to have an ingrowing toe-nail. But my patients have a decided will of their own. There's young Ab Cowan--they sent for me last night to go out to see him. He has a bad attack of quinsy, but it is the strangest case I ever saw."

The gaiety had died out of the young man's face, and he looked perplexed and anxious.

"I do wish the old doctor and I were on speaking terms," he concluded.

"And are you not?" the minister asked in surprise. "Miss Barner told me that you had been very kind--and I thought--" There was a flush on the minister's face, and he hesitated.

"Oh, Miss Barner and I are the best of friends," the doctor said. "I say, Grantley, hasn't that little girl had one lonely life, and isn't she the brave little soul!"

The minister was silent, all but his eyes.

The doctor went on:

"'Who hath sorrow, who hath woe, who hath redness of eyes?' Solomon, wasn't it, who said it was 'they who tarry long at the wine'? I think he should have added 'those who wait at home.' Don't you think she is a remarkably beautiful girl, Grantley?" he asked abruptly.

"I do, indeed," the minister answered, giving his friend a searching glance. "But how about the doctor, why will he not speak to you?" He was glad of a chance to change the subject.

"I suppose the old man's pride is hurt every time he sees me. He evidently thinks he is all the medical aid they need around here. But I do wish he would come with me to see this young Cowan; it's the most puzzling case I've ever met. There are times, Grantley, when I think I should be following the plough."

The minister looked at him thoughtfully.

"A man can only do his best, Horace," he said kindly.

CHAPTER IX

THE LIVE WIRE

"Who is this young gentleman or lady?" Dr. Clay asked of Pearlie Watson one day when he met her wheeling a baby carriage with an abnormally fat baby in it.

"This is the Czar of all the Roos.h.i.+a," Pearl answered gravely, "and I'm his body-guard."

The doctor's face showed no surprise as he stepped back to get a better look at the czar, who began to squirm at the delay.

"See the green plush on his kerridge," Pearl said proudly, "and every st.i.tch he has on is hand-made, and was did for him, too, and he's fed every three hours, rain or s.h.i.+ne, hit or miss."

"Think of that!" the doctor exclaimed with emphasis, "and yet some people tell us that the Czar has a hard time of it."

Pearl drew a step nearer, moving the carriage up and down rapidly to appease the wrath of the czar, who was expressing his disapproval in a very lumpy cry.

"I'm just 'tendin', you know, about him bein' the czar," she said confidentially. "You see, I mind him every day, and that's the way I play. Maudie Ducker said one day I never had no time to play cos we wuz so pore, and that started me. It's a lovely game."

The doctor nodded. He knew something of "'tendin' games" too.

"I have to taste everything he eats, for fear of Paris green," Pearl went on, speaking now in the loud official tone of the body-guard. "I have to stand between him and the howlin' mob thirstin' for his gore."

"He seems to howl more than the mob," the doctor said smiling.

"He's afraid we're plottin'," Pearl whispered. "Can't trust no one. He ain't howlin'. That's his natcheral voice when he's talkin' Rooshan. He don't know one English word, only 'Goo!' But he'll say that every time.

See now. How is a precious luvvy-duvvy? See the pitty man, pull um baby toofin!"

At which the czar, secure in his toothlessness, rippled his fat face into dimples, and triumphantly brought forth a whole succession of "goos."

"Ain't he a peach?" Pearlie said with pride. "Some kids won't show off worth a cent when ye want them to, but he'll say 'goo' if you even nudge him. His mother thinks 'goo' is awful childish, and she is at him all the time to say 'Daddy-dinger,' but he never lets on he hears her.

Say, doctor"--Pearlie's face was troubled--"what do you think of his looks? Just between ourselves. Hasn't he a fine little nub of a nose?