Also, our colored cook Sallie and our colored useful man Noah have
entered upon a war of extermination. The original trouble was over a
little matter of kindling, augmented by a pail of hot water that Sallie
threw out of the window with, for a woman, unusual accuracy of aim. You
can see what a rare character the head of an orphan asylum must
have. She has to combine the qualities of a baby nurse and a police
magistrate.
The doctor had told only the half when we reached the house, and as
he had not yet dined, owing to meeting me three times, I begged him
to accept the hospitality of the John Grier. I would get Betsy and Mr.
Witherspoon, and we would hold an executive meeting, and settle all our
neglected businesses.
Sandy accepted with flattering promptness. He likes to dine outside of
the family vault.
But Betsy, I found, had dashed home to greet a visiting grandparent,
and Percy was playing bridge in the village. It's seldom the young thing
gets out of an evening, and I'm glad for him to have a little cheerful
diversion.
So it ended in the doctor's and my dining tete-a-tete on a hastily
improvised dinner,--it was then close upon eight, and our normal dinner
hour is 6:30,--but it was such an improvised dinner as I am sure
Mrs. McGurk never served him. Sallie, wishing to impress me with her
invaluableness, did her absolutely Southern best. And after dinner we
had coffee before the fire in my comfortable blue library, while the
wind howled outside and the shutters banged.
We passed a most cordial and intimate evening. For the first time
since our acquaintance I struck a new note in the man. There really is
something attractive about him when you once come to know him. But the
process of knowing him requires time and tact. He's no' very gleg at the
uptak. I've never seen such a tantalizing inexplicable person. All the
time I'm talking to him I feel as though behind his straight line of a
mouth and his half-shut eyes there were banked fires smoldering inside.
Are you sure he hasn't committed a crime? He does manage to convey the
delicious feeling that he has.
And I must add that Sandy's not so bad a talker when he lets himself go.
He has the entire volume of Scotch literature at his tongue's end.
"Little kens the auld wife as she sits by the fire what the wind is
doing on Hurly-Burly-Swire," he observed as a specially fierce blast
drove the rain against the window. That sounds pat, doesn't it? I
haven't, though, the remotest idea what it means. And listen to this:
between cups of coffee (he drinks far too much coffee for a sensible
medical man) he casually let fall the news that his family knew the R.
L. S. family personally, and used to take supper at 17 Heriot Row! I
tended him assiduously for the rest of the evening in a Did you once see
Shelley plain, And did he stop and speak to you? frame of mind.