Part 7 (1/2)

”What does this mean?” he said. ”What upon earth are you doing, you two?”

Miss Vesta looked up, pink and breathless.

”My dear Doctor Strong, I wish you would use your professional influence with Vesta. I am making a little preparation, as you see, for this evening. It--I take pleasure in it, and find the exercise beneficial. But Vesta is entirely unfit for it, as I have repeatedly pointed out to her. She persists--” the little lady paused for breath.

The young doctor took the cloth from the girl's hand, and opened the door.

”You would better go and lie down, Miss Blyth,” he said, abruptly.

”I'll see to this--” he said ”tomfoolery,” but not aloud.

The colour crept into Vesta's white cheeks, the first he had seen there. ”I don't want to lie down, thank you!” she said, coldly. ”Give me the cloth, please!”

Their eyes measured swords for an instant. Then--

”You can hardly stand now,” said Geoffrey, quietly. ”If you faint I shall have to carry you up-stairs, and that--”

She was gone, but he still saw her face like a white flame. He looked after her a moment, then turned to Miss Vesta, who was still on her knees. His look of annoyance changed to one of distress. ”Dear Miss Vesta, will you please get up this moment? What can you be doing? Are you praying to Saint Beeswax?”

”Oh, no, Doctor Strong. We never--the Orthodox Church--but you are jesting, my dear young friend. I--a little healthful exercise--oh, please, Doctor Geoffrey!”

For two strong hands lifted her bodily, and set her down in her own particular armchair. ”Exercise is recommended for me,” said the little lady, piteously. ”You yourself, Doctor Geoffrey, said I ought to take more exercise.”

”So you shall. You shall dance all the evening, if you like. I'll play the fiddle, and you and the minister--no, no, I don't mean the minister! Don't look like that! you and Deacon Weight shall dance together. It will be the elephant and the fl--b.u.t.terfly. But I am going to do this, Miss Vesta.”

He in turn went down on his knees to the teak-wood chair, and examined it curiously. ”Is this--supposed to need cleaning?” he asked; ”or is it to be used as a looking-gla.s.s? Perhaps you had just finished this one?”

He looked hopefully at Miss Vesta, and saw her face cloud with distress.

”I was about to polish it a little,” she said. ”It is already clean, in a measure, but a little extra polish on such occasions--”

Geoffrey did not wait for more, but rubbed away with might and main, talking the while.

”You see, Miss Vesta, it is very important for me to learn about these things. You and Miss Phoebe may turn me out some day, and then the lonely bachelor will have to set up his own establishment, and cook his own dinner, and polish his own chairs. Do you think I could cook a dinner? I'll tell you what we'll do, some day; we'll send Diploma off for a holiday, and I'll get the dinner.”

”Oh, my dear young friend, I fear that would not be possible. Diploma is so set in her ways! She will hardly let me set foot in the kitchen, but Sister Phoebe goes in whenever she pleases. I--I think that chair is as bright as it _can_ be, Doctor Strong. I am greatly obliged to you. It looks beautiful, and now I need not trouble you further; you are much occupied, I am sure. Oh, pray--pray give me back the cloth, Doctor Geoffrey.”

But Geoffrey declared he had not had such fun for weeks. ”Consider my biceps,” he said. ”You ought to consider my biceps, Miss Vesta.”

He went from chair to chair, Miss Vesta following him with little plaintive murmurs, in which distress and admiration were equally blended; and rubbed, and rubbed again, till all the room was full of dark glory. There was one bad moment, when the weak leg of the three-cornered table threatened to give way under his vigorous attack, and protested with a sharp squeak of anguish; but though Geoffrey and Miss Vesta both examined it with searching scrutiny, no new crack was visible. He offered to bandage the old crack, warranting to make the ailing leg the strongest of the four; but, on the whole, it did not seem necessary.

”If only Deacon Weight does not lean on it!” said Miss Vesta. ”Perhaps you could manage to stand near it yourself, Doctor Geoffrey, if you should see the deacon approaching it. He is apt, when engaged in conversation, to rest both elbows on a table; it is a great strain on any furniture.”

Geoffrey looked a little blank. ”Were you expecting me to join the party?” he asked; ”I thought--I should be rather in the way, shouldn't I?” He read his answer in the piteous startled look of the little lady, and hastened on before she could speak. ”I didn't suppose I was invited, Miss Vesta. Of course I shall come, if I may, with the greatest pleasure.”

”Dear Doctor Strong,” said Miss Vesta, with a happy sigh, ”it would have been such a sad blow if we must have dispensed with your society.”

It would indeed have been a tragic disappointment to both sisters if their lodger had not appeared on the great occasion. As it was, Miss Vesta was fluttered, and only restored to full composure when, at tea, Doctor Strong begged to know the exact hour at which the guests were expected, that he might be ready on time.

The pride of the good ladies knew no bounds when Doctor Strong entered the parlour in faultless evening dress, with a tiny blush-rose, from Miss Vesta's favourite tree, in his b.u.t.tonhole. Evening dress was becoming to Geoffrey. The Ladies' Society fluttered at sight of him, and primmed itself, and shook out its skirts.

Geoffrey's face was radiant over his white tie. He had planned a cozy evening in his own room, with a new treatise on orthopaedics that had just come; but no one would have thought that he took delight in anything except Society meetings. He went from group to group, as if he were the son of the house, cheering the forlorn, lightening the heavy, smoothing down the p.r.i.c.kly,--a medical Father O'Flynn. But it was the elderly and the middle-aged that he sought out; the matrons whose children he had tended, the spinsters whose neuralgia he had relieved.