A new Young Gentleman came to Town today. He has a very Serious Asspeckt.
(ENTRY IN THE DIARY OF MISS ARAMINTA JERROLD)
Gray mists suspired from the stream called Mud Creek by the cultured settlers and Ganargwa by the dull, unlettered Indians. The sun stood clear above the earthy thimble known as Winter Green Knob. On every side for miles around similar protuberances jutted up from the level, all sloping gently from the south and dropping in clifflike abruptness at the northern end. It was a landscape the geologic like of which exists nowhere else upon the face of earth.
The young man on the wagon seat did not appreciate this. Nevertheless, he was interested in his surroundings which he surveyed with an observant eye. Here was a countryside very different from the Oneida Hills of his birthplace with their harsh acclivities and turbulent watercourses, a region more suave and friendly. Palmyra village, too, as he approached it from the east, was comfortable to the apprehensions of a stranger about to make his venture in life.
No fewer than three church spires thrust upward into the scented June air. The main thoroughfare along which his mare daintily picked her way was a generous five rods in breadth. The crude log cabins of the environs had been succeeded by trim frame houses, white with green shutters, topped by brick chimneys and gay, gilded weathercocks brave in the slanted sunlight. Beyond these, the stores and mills stretched in ordered array, substantial as fortifications. A prosperous town; an up-and-coming town. His Scottish grandmother would have had a word to put to it. The word was “couthy.”
“Hospitality, Clean & Decent, for Man & Beast” announced the Eagle Tavern in red letters picked out with white against a background of true blue. “L. St. John, Prop’r” was authority for the promise. Above, the symbolic bird spread gleaming pinions.
“Come in. A good morning to you.”
The stranger looked up into a seamed and ruddy face.
“Good morning,” he answered pleasantly.
“Are you for breakfast, sir?” inquired the host.
“Yes. And accommodations for the night.”
“You come none too soon. By evening we shall be full-taken. Not a room will be vacant and we shall be charging two shillings for standees in the halls.”
He pointed to a newspaper advertisement affixed to the posting board.
June the Twenty-sixth, 1820.
Upon this Evening and the Following,
a Superior Theatrical Entertainment
will be Presented in the Great Ballroom of this House.
The Lyceum Dramatic Company
in the Moral Tragedy
GEORGE BARNWELL,
or the London Apprentice.
To be Followed by the Comic Glee,
Dame Durden.
Saturday Evening, The Spectre Bridegroom.
Admission, 50 Cents—Children, Half-price.
The new arrival gave it an incurious glance.
“What is your charge for a chamber, by the week?”
Mr. St. John conned him with shrewd appraisal. “A dollar a day,” he said boldly.
“Surely that is very dear.”
“My dear sir, consider the character of my house,” returned the host warmly. “The Eagle is the regular victualing-stop for all stages. You can be sure of your fare here.” He reflected. “I’ve to keep your animal, too. Make it six dollars the week, and no more said.”
“Very good. What’s for breakfast?”
“A pork pie, fine and hot. Tender-boiled steak. Sausages. Eggs to taste. Flannel cakes with honey. Well-burned coffee, all the way from Albany. Will you have a dram of liquor?”
He went to the pump in the yard. Mr. St. John watched with surprise as he took from one pocket a horn toothbrush and from another a stick of chalk which he rubbed upon the bristles, preparatory to cleansing his teeth.
“Proud pertickler, ain’t he!” commented the host to himself. He was not sure that he approved such extreme measures. They served, however, to whet his interest. Presently he drew a chair to the table and seated himself opposite the guest.
“Where you from, Mister?”
“Clinton Settlement in Oneida County.”
“Quite a piece of travel. Got a tetch of the Western fever, huh?”
The other smiled. Food had ameliorated his reserve. “I find the region interesting.”
“If you were minded to take up land, you couldn’t find better. Rich soil and easy to subdue. Once the trees are cleared, it’ll grow anything. Thriving commerce. Look at our mills. Look at our stores. Look at our asheries.”
“I intend to.”
“Are you farming, then?”
“No.”
“What is your business, make-so-bold?”
“I am a practitioner of physic and surgery. Horace Amlie, M.D. Certified by state and county boards.”
“Likely you’d pick up a bit of practice by exhibiting a card on my post-board. All the township consults my post-board. Half a dollar to you, since you are a guest of the house.”
“Not too fast. I must look about me first.”
A formidable voice bellowed, “Taproom! Taproom! Bar, there! Can a man get a drink, by God? Or is this a temperance house?”
“Coming. Coming,” cried Mr. St. John, bouncing out of his chair.
A moment later Dr. Amlie heard the robustious tones demanding, “A fipsworth of the ardent, and don’t scamp the brim, old cock.”
Having made a satisfactory meal, Dr. Amlie returned to the veranda. His mare had been taken to the shed. Where she had been tied, four sturdy horses stood with their night blankets of oilcloth still over their flanks. A legend, gaudily painted on the side of the wagon to which they were hitched, read:
JED PARRIS. PALMYRA TO ALBANY.
Merchandise Teamed. Prices on Request.
The man himself came out wiping his lips, a heavy-bearded, jovial ruffian of thirty-odd. To the proprietor who followed, he was saying with a grin, “Thirty cents a gallon for your whisky? You may keep it to rot your own fat gut. I can buy my wagon full in Schenectady for two shilling.”
“Prices are up,” grumbled the other. “There’s no profit in anything. What do you make on your drawing?”
“One hundred dollars the ton on the through haul,” replied the teamster with satisfaction.
“Wait till the canal comes through,” said Mr. St. John with a gleam of malice. “You’ll touch no such price then.”
“The canawl! The canawl!” jeered Jed Parris. “I’ll spit you all the canawl you’ll get.” He ejected a welter of tobacco juice over the rail and lifted a hoarse basso.
“Clinton, the federal son-of-a-bitch,
Taxes our dollars to build him a ditch.
Bury old Clinton so deep in the mud …”
A metallic peal cut him short. The door swung wide, revealing the slim and elegant figure of a man in his early twenties. His handsome, hawkish face was framed in luxuriant side whiskers, sprouting upward to meet the long, silky hair that wholly screened the upper part of his ears. He wiped the mouthpiece of a shining bugle.
“Who sings that weevily, Bucktail ditty?” he demanded.
Jed Parris bristled. “I do. And what’s that to you?”
“An offense,” returned the other coolly.
“Mr. Silverhorn Ramsey is a canaller by trade,” put in the host.
The bulky teamster seemed struck by the name. “Mr. Silverhorn Ramsey?” he repeated.
“Captain Silverhorn Ramsey,” corrected the other. “A hot rumbullion for me, if you please, my worthy host.”
“Just the same, this here canal talk is east wind in a man’s belly, as Scripture says,” blustered Parris.
“This gentleman might tell us otherwise,” said the innkeeper, interpreting the stranger’s wise smile. “He’s from a county where it’s already operating—Oneida.”
“Is he a boatee, too?” asked the teamster disgustedly.
“He is a practitioner of physic and surgery,” explained Mr. St. John with respect.
Silverhorn Ramsey lifted wet lips from his glass. “Young Æsculapius, eh?”
“What do you know of Æsculapius?” asked the other curiously.
“Oh, I tried my hand at the pellet-and-bolus trade. Not good enough,” said the canal man negligently. “Have you a sure medic for the pox?”
Horace Amlie, M.D., stiffened. He held a high and prickly regard for his chosen profession, the more so in that he was so new to it. His look measured the other steadily.
“Do you seek a professional consultation, sir?”
Silverhorn cackled with arrogant mirth. “Not I! But I could put you in the way of a thriving trade, so be you could warrant a three-day cure as the almanach promises. The turnpike coffee taps are no better than fancy kens, and the teamers still have money in their pockets.”
“I am neither an itinerant nor an almanach healer,” said the young medico coldly.
“You could do no better than sport your shingle here,” averred Mr. St. John with conviction. “Our commerce increases daily. We are the nation’s center for the mint industry. Our hemp establishes the market price. Our ash, both pot and pearl, has no superior. Mud Creek teems with traffic. When Governor Clinton’s waterway is projected here and beyond, Auburn may swallow its pride and Geneva and Canandaigua wring their hands over lost glories, for we shall indeed be the Golden Emporium of the Growing West.”
“I read it all in the newspaper,” said Silverhorn. “Hunca-munca to your Palmyra, say I. The canal’s the thing.”
“The canal will establish Palmyra at the very heart of the new prosperity,” declared the local man. “The day the first boat comes, I enlarge my accommodations.”
“You may rent them to the chintzes for all the good you’ll get of the ditch,” snorted the teamster.
“No man ever found a chintz in my beds that he did not bring there himself,” said St. John, reddening.
“Why are you so assured that the boats will not come here?” the physician asked the teamster.
“Boats run on water, don’t they?”
“They do.”
“Can water run uphill?”
“Did you never hear of a lock?”
“Aye. And seen ’em, too. And the pent water breaking through their ruinated sides. It’s agin nature, so it is. You can’t go agin nature. Water seeks its level and God help what stands in its way,” said the teamster, using the hackneyed argument of the opposition.
“It is true that defective locks have broken through,” conceded the physician. “They have been rebuilt. The commerce goes on. Mr. St. John will do well to enlarge his facilities in advance.”
The big teamster spat on the sanded floor. “If you know as little of physic as of traffic, you may eat your own boluses or starve.” He lifted his nail-studded boots, one after another, and examined them critically, sole and heel. “These bottoms must last me to Fort Plain,” said he. “I charge off a pair against profits for every trip. Four miles to the hour and but one mile out of ten on the wagon seat. My poor pads! I shall take them to the barber on my return. He calls himself a medic, too. Will you trim my corns cheaper than him, Doc?”
“Dr. Amlie to you,” said the young man rigidly.
The teamster made a vulgar noise through his pursed lips.
“Buy you a boat, Jed, and you can sit on your own deck and trail your corns in the water,” the innkeeper taunted him.
“That dithered lunk on the canal?” interposed Silverhorn softly. “There’s not a spavined nag from Albany to Rome that wouldn’t kick his fat bum off the towpath at sight of him.”
This was too much. Parris let out a roar and pushed back his sleeves. To Horace Amlie it seemed probable that the impudent bugler would presently have need of medical attention, for his opponent bulked to nearly twice his weight. But Host St. John popped nimbly forth with a hickory bat in hand.
“Outside for your settlements,” he ordained.
“Wait a bit,” said Silverhorn. “Is that a fly on your wall?” There was a swift pass of his hand. A gleam split the air; a thud sounded. The knife quivered in the basswood boarding. “Missed him, by God!” said the young man with a pretense of incredulous discomfiture.
Mr. Jed Parris, though a bold enough fighting man, left the room peaceably. He was convinced that to push the difference further would be unprofitable. Unleashing his nigh lead horse, he clucked his four into movement and was off, stretching his legs in the steady rhythm of the “dust-eater” with his fifty miles to do by sundown. Silverhorn, stepping to the porch, looked after him and yawned. He polished his mouthpiece on his sleeve, pressed it to his full lips, and sent after the departing equipage a beautiful, clear, ringing note, as vainglorious as the crow of the victor in a cockpit. Indeed, thought Horace Amlie, he had all the virility and vanity of a cockerel, and with it, something of the menace of coiled steel.
The innkeeper polished and replaced his glassware. “Why not take a look around our village, young sir?” he suggested. “You will see much to please you.”
A young lady, making the turn from the inn corner, craned her graceful head, affording Horace Amlie an advantageous sight of a delicate, serious face of pure contours, from which dove-gray eyes looked out in shy appraisal. Silverhorn assumed a rakish pose.
“A bene mort,” he commented, caressing a side whisker.
“None of your gyppo lingo for the likes of Miss Agatha Levering,” the tavern keeper rebuked him.
“The Leverings of the asheries,” Silverhorn was obliging enough to explain for the stranger’s enlightenment. “They hold their chins high.”
“And why not?” said Mr. St. John.
“True for you,” conceded the canal man. “They’re crumey with bank-rags. But does that righten her to look down her pretty nose at a man that’s had better than her and left ’em when done with ’em?”
Horace was both amused and disgusted. Evidently this young sprig had flaunted his manly charms in vain before the gray-eyed beauty. The canaller expertly twirled his bugle on his thumb, restored it to the buckle on his belt and swaggered to the door, bidding Horace farewell with an airy flirt of the hand.
“We’ll meet again, young Æsculapius.”
“Who is he?” Horace inquired of the host.
“A rouncher. A real rouncher. His family were well thought of, down Jerusalem way. He’s the black sheep. Had his turn at smuggling on the lakes. If you can believe the talk, he was with the New York mob that operated a bogus two years ago; I’ve been nicked with the false money of their coinage and be damned to it. Nothing proved on him, though. He’s slick as a mink. Since then he’s swung his tiller on two canals, and now he’s for this one. Very much the gentleman when he chooses. It’s good blood with a bad turn to it. Are you for a stroll of inspection, sir?”
Dr. Amlie looked ruefully down at his feet. “I shall have to get my gear mended first, or go barefoot as an urchin.”
“Nothing easier. Decker Jessup is your man. At the Sign of the Red Boot.”
The village had not yet waked to business as the physician walked down the street, but the door beneath the swaying emblem was open. Within, a pale, corpulent man sat wheezing at his bench, which was fitted with neat shelves for his awls, punches and hammers, a shallow leathern pouch for remnants, stretchers for the strips of hides and, over all, a palanquin-like roof.
“You work early,” remarked the caller.
The cobbler peered nearsightedly at him. “When fools are still abed, the world is to the wise,” he croaked. “What’s your will?”
The doctor pointed to his boots. “Can you repair these?”
“Stand steady.” Decker Jessup picked one foot from the floor as if it were a horse’s hoof, set it down and repeated the process with the other. “You go shod like a mincing miss,” he pronounced. “Nothing to be done here.”
The young man was annoyed. “What kind of craftsman are you that cannot mend sound leather?” he demanded sharply.
“A very good craftsman. An excellent craftsman. But not in such a matter. Your gear is better fitten for a ball-floor than for road service. Delicate leather, but not worth the cost of repairs. Cast ’em to the rats and let me make you a serviceable pair.”
“By declining to mend my shoes you hope to better me in a trade, I presume.”
“I better no man. Value given is my rule. Will you be shod with the true preparation? One dollar.”
The visitor regarded his feet uncertainly. “I should like to save these. Waste I cannot afford. Few things are beyond repair.”
“You tell me that, who are a learned doctor?”
“How do you know that?”
The cobbler’s round shoulders shook with self-satisfied mirth. “When you turned, a blind man could see the Latin print on the certificate perking from your pocket. Come, young man, let me turn you out a pair of boots, factored from the true preparation, such as will do honor to your feet. Ready by sundown. A dollar will nor make nor break you, to judge from your fine clothes.”
“Will you take it out in trade?”
“What! Physicking? I don’t hold with doctors. I medicate out of the Masonic Almanach and save the costs.”
“You look it,” retorted the customer. “You’ve bile in your eye to be scraped with a knife. Your skin is yellow as cowslip and the cat could borrow your tongue for a tail.”
“Hoity-toity and hale-you-to-jail!” said the astonished cobbler. “What cockerel have we here? I’ve done well enough for forty year without your opinion.”
“What’s that at the turn of your jaw?”
The craftsman fingered the protuberance with tenderness. “What would you say of it?”
“Cynanche parotidea. Or perhaps caries dentium.”
“English will do for my jaw. It’s no more than an overgrown tooth.”
“As I said. Let me examine.”
Hypnotized by the other’s masterful touch, Cobbler Jessup permitted his head to be tilted back and his eyes covered with his own neckerchief.
“Open,” said the young man in an authoritative tone. “Wider. Ah!”
“Ow!” yelled the patient.
Having lifted from their appointed place the cobbler’s own pincers, Dr. Amlie had tweaked forth the tooth in one powerful jerk.
“There!” said he. “Didn’t hurt, did it?”
“Yes.”
“You’ll sleep the better for it this night. Wash out your oral cavity with whisky. Extractio dentis, one shilling.”
“You charge high for a small matter,” grumbled the other, caressing his jaw.
“Skill and education are worth their price,” returned the sententious physician. “Deduct it from the cost of my boots.”
The patient grinned. “You will go far, young man.”
Dr. Amlie looked out upon the street, now burgeoning into activity. “Perhaps no farther than this,” he murmured.
“Are you opening a consultation room?”
“I must make a start somewhere. Why not here?”
“I know the very spot for you,” declared the cobbler. “Genteel lodgings at a fair, living price. A most respectable lady. I should know, she being my widowed sister. Let me conduct you there.”
Putting aside his leathern apron, he led the way around the corner of Canandaigua Road to a small, pleasant dwelling. Mrs. Martha Harte presented a lugubrious countenance, a clammy hand, and an air of discouraged patience, but admitted to having a ground floor which she might be willing to rent.
“Ten shillings the week, and I’ll victual you well, though I’d prob’ly lose money on it,” she said with a snivel.
Dr. Amlie privately thought this prophecy unlikely. The house was roomy and well-placed, the chamber stoutly furnished, if a bit musty, and the price little more than he had intended to pay.
“I am obligated to the Eagle House for a week,” he explained. “After that I will advise you of my decision.”
Bidding them good morning he turned back into Main Street. To the casual eye he would have appeared a young gentleman out for a pleasurable stroll while smoking his after-breakfast segar. But the eyes beneath the fashionably curved hat-brim were alert and observant; the brain back of them busy with estimate and appraisal.
The clock in the window of J. Evernghim stood at eight. The street was already astir. Downwind was borne a spicy tang, new to the nostrils of the outlander. He doubtfully identified it as spearmint, though he did not locate the prosperous still which produced the principal supply of the tincture to the candy, the medical and the perfume trade of the nation. A sharper, more acrid odor exuded from the tannery on the creek bank, and with it mingled the sour, sturdy aroma of the two asheries which faced one another across the stream, and the festive breath of mash, fermenting to whisky in the corner distillery. Along the waterfront sawmills buzzed, gristmills clacked, and fulling-mills clattered in choral contribution to the happy clamor of prosperity.
The stranger paused beside a vacant lot giving a long view down Mud Creek, that legally established traffic-way between Macedon to the westward and on to Lyons in the other direction. A barge toiled against the sluggish current, laden with cord from the ropewalk two miles downstream, product of the local hemp-fields which commanded their price of more than two hundred dollars per ton in any market. Two lean Indians were paddling a canoe, across which was balanced a fine buck, ready for dressing into venison. Back of them, and slower of pace, two batteaus moved to the impulsion of oars; the men sweating at the task, while the womenfolk, gay with finery, anticipated a day of shopping in the superior emporia of Palmyra.
Already the windows were setting forth the temptation of their wares; the Cheap Store exhibiting its bonnets, shawls and bright kerchiefs from Albany and New York; the provision shops their viands both dry and wet; the smithy, ringing out its metallic music; the tailoring establishment flaunting its dandy apparel for man and boy; Drake’s Wagon & Sleigh place its equipages; strong and graceful furniture by Bezabeel Fornum, the cabinet factor; ironmongery for all uses and to every taste; the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker all smiling a welcome to the early trade.
As young Dr. Amlie stood in interested contemplation, a bent and crabbed dyspeptic emerged from a doorway, bearing an ornate sign under his arm and dragging a chair in his other hand. Stepping upon the seat, he carefully swung his board to two wrought-iron hooks, thus proclaiming to the world that O. Daggett, gilder, painter and sign-factor was ready for business. The young physician cast a desirous eye on the splendor above him. He hesitated in balance between his ambition for a similarly alluring professional announcement and his consciousness of depleted funds. A squat, brisk fellow was chaffering with O. Daggett.
“How much for a sign, this style?”
The customer counted them on his fingers as he enunciated jerkily:
“T. Lay—Buys Everything—Fair Dealing to One and All—Highest Prices—Custom Solicited. Thirteen words.”
O. Daggett occupied himself with his own fingers. “I make it fourteen.”
“You wouldn’t charge a man two words for a name as short as mine, would you?” protested Mr. Lay, aggrieved.
“Make it three dollars.”
“Three dollars is a power of money.”
“Take paint and I’ll do it for two. This is the costliest gilt in the market.”
“It shines like gold. I like it. Three dollars, then. Barter?”
“Cash from you, Trumbull Lay.”
“I got no three dollars cash. Where would I find three dollars cash? There’s little money going in this town. Take whisky.”
“Don’t drink.”
“Twist?”
“Don’t chaw.”
“Black-salt?”
“Don’t shoot. Got no gun.”
“Fresh meat and vegetables daily for your table then,” appealed the other.
“Got no digestion, neither. Bring me cash or good bills or save your breath and my time.” O. Daggett turned to survey the stranger. “Anything in your line, young sir?”
Dr. Amlie returned a regretful negative, and resumed his stroll. Before spending he must begin to earn. An elderly black man limped toward him, smiling and knuckling at his sparse white forecurl.
“Give a po’ slave a shillin’, Your Honah.”
“Whose slave were you?”
“Massa Helms’s, on Great Sodus. He daid, praise God. A hahd man. Give old Unk Zeb a shillin’, sah. Zeb’s hungry.”
“No. I won’t give you money. But if you come to the Eagle late this afternoon, I’ll treat your eyes.” The ex-slave’s vision was blurred with trachoma.
The Negro bobbed in gratitude and hobbled on. From an open window a reedy and pious refrain came to the ears of the wayfarer. A hunchback was operating a lap-organ with busily pumping elbow, while he hummed the refrain of “Bramcoate” in rehearsal for the morrow’s service. Facing him a woman wove a fine straw hat with delicate and careful art.
“Plat you a hat, young gentleman?” she asked, seeing him pause.
Everyone in town, it appeared, was after his or some other person’s trade. He liked that. It betokened an alert and active community. Presently he would have something to sell to it.
“How long does it take you to finish a hat like that?” he asked, admiring the handiwork.
“Nine days. I sell for six dollars and find and cure my own straw.” She sighed. “I make out to gain our living while he”—she nodded indulgently toward the musician—“pumps his little wheezer and lines out the hymns.”
A stern-looking personage in black stopped before the place. “See to it that you keep truer measure than last Sunday,” he admonished the hunchback.
“The Reverend Theron Strang,” said the woman respectfully, as he left. “A kind man until the dyspepsy takes him. Then he’s a powerful hell-fire exhorter and death on backsliders. Weekdays he conducts the Register newspaper, where you see him climbing yonder stairs.”
“And I’m his devil,” put in the hunchback. “Tom Daw, the parson’s devil.”
The rattle-and-plunk of a handpress gave evidence that the reverend gentleman was his own printer. A specimen of his job-work made appeal to the eye in an adjacent window.
EPHRAIM UPCRAFT
the
Honest Lawyer.
Uncurrent Notes Bought.
The explorer winced. In his weaselskin reposed sundry paper of the Ontario Bank which was decidedly uncurrent, that institution being in a state of coma if not actually defunct. Elder Amlie of Utica, the young man’s uncle, had offered him twenty-five percent of what he could realize on the $150 face value of the notes. Without some return from them, his immediate outlook was skimpy.
Where two churches marked the end of the business section, as it abruptly thinned out into stump-studded fields and heavy copses, he crossed over to retrace his journey of inspection on the opposite side. The farther he went, the more was he impressed by the number and quality of the establishments. He passed a timberyard, a store displaying splitwood chairs and baskets, a maltster’s location, a second inn, the Exchange, rather dingy, and a barber shop, “At the Sign of the Streaked Pole; L. Brooks, M.D.” The duly certified practitioner indulged in a private sneer. What sort of M.D. would debase himself from the forceps and lancet to the shears and razor?
The enunciation of his name, in this town where he was unknown, startled him. It was only Decker Jessup summoning him from the door across the thoroughfare.
“I’ve something to show you,” said the cobbler as his new acquaintance approached. “Keep your eye on that door.”
The indicated spot was the side exit of the Eagle. Presently there appeared a sleek, tall figure, glossy-hatted and heavy-bearded, dandling a silverheaded cane.
“Our medical faculty,” said the cobbler. “Dr. Gail Murchison.”
“He makes his visits early.”
“He takes his dram early. He’ll have another at eleven.”
“I should like to meet him.”
“Nothing easier.” As the doctor came near, with a slow and dignified pace, the cobbler accosted him. “Dr. Murchison, good morning, sir.”
“Ah! The worthy Jessup. Good morning, good morning.”
“Make you acquainted with Dr. Horace Amlie, late of Oneida County.”
“Doctor? Did you say doctor? You profess medicine, sir?”
“As a tyro, only,” replied the newcomer modestly.
The older man peered out from beneath lowering brows. “Ah, so! You’re not thinking to settle here, are you?”
“My plans are not yet matured,” Horace evaded.
Dr. Murchison waved a hand, every nail of which was outlined in sable. “A cruel, healthy place,” he bumbled. “And penny-pinching—oh, my soul! Our health is notorious. A practitioner finds little to do, and for that little is paid in thanks. Had you thought of Rochesterville?”
“I have visited there.”
“A fine, feverous town,” said Dr. Murchison with enthusiasm. “No better opening for an ambitious young medical man.”
Decker Jessup coughed, gazing with intent upon the well-rounded belly that distended the flowery beaverteen of the speaker’s waistcoat.
“Yes, yes, a starvation calling,” sighed the other. He brightened. “But we serve a purpose, sir. The dignity of the profession.”
An exploring bee, thinking favorably of the Murchison breath, became entangled in the luxuriant whiskers. The doctor clawed angrily at it.
“Damn that young Crego!” he spluttered. “His pests should be banished the town.”
Two little girls, tripping along the sidepath, stopped and viewed his antics with mirth.
“Giggling goslings!” he muttered under his breath. “Oh, ’tis you, my dear Wealthia. And our little Araminta. Two of my young patients,” he explained to Dr. Amlie.
Having exorcised the bee, he bowed to the alien and passed on. The children lingered, listening to the music of Tom Daw’s lap-organ, now dispensing a lay which never derived from the hymnbook. The taller of the pair, who looked to be on the verge of womanhood, swayed her lithe body and moved on frisky feet. Her companion, a couple of years younger, lifted an impertinently cocked nose between two large and very blue eyes, and shook her strawy pigtail back over her shoulder.
“That’s a dicty pretty tune,” she said in lilting tones, and essayed to follow it.
The cobbler gave them good morning, to which they responded civilly. They clasped hands and danced on along the walk.
“Now, if you could get their custom away from Old Murch,” said the cobbler, “you’d have a start.”
“Who are they?” asked Dr. Amlie without special interest.
“The older one, with the comether in those brown eyes of hers—though she might not know it yet—she’s the only child of Genter Latham. T’other one’s an imp of Satan. She’s from the stone mansion on the slope, the Jerrold place. Fine gentry, too, though not as rich and solid as Genter Latham. A neat penny Old Murch makes from the two houses. All our prosperous folks doctor with him.”
“And the poor? Where do they doctor?”
“Not with Dr. M., to be sure. What would he gain from them?”
“Experience.”
The other chuckled. “Not his line. If you’re seeking experience, you’ll find a free field here.”
“I’ll look about,” said Dr. Horace Amlie.