Part 3 (1/2)

”That would be a great help,” William King said. ”Then Dr. Lavendar can have plenty of time to find a home for him. I would have been glad to take him myself, but just at present it happens that it is not--I should say, Mrs. King is very tired, and--”

”It is perfectly convenient for me,” Mrs. Richie said, ”if you'll only cure Maggie! You must cure Maggie, so that she can make cookies for him.”

”I'll cure Maggie,” the doctor a.s.sured her smiling, and went away much pleased with himself. But when he got into his shabby old buggy he sighed.

”Poor soul!” he said. ”Poor soul!”

CHAPTER III

William King reported the result of his call to Dr. Lavendar, and when he told the tragic story of the dead baby the old man blinked and shook his head.

”Do you wonder she doesn't call herself Mrs. _Frederick_ Richie?”

William demanded. ”I don't!”

”No; that's natural, that's natural,” Dr. Lavendar admitted.

”I suppose it was a dreadful thing to say,” said William, ”but I just burst out and said that if ever there was an excuse for divorce, she had it!”

”What did she say?”

”Oh, of course, that she hadn't been divorced. I was ashamed of myself the next minute for speaking of such a thing.”

”Poor child,” said Dr. Lavendar, ”living up there alone, and with such memories! I guess you're right; I guess she'd like to have little David, if only for company. But I think I'll keep him for a week or two myself, and let her get sort of acquainted with him under my eye.

That will give me a chance to get acquainted with her. But to think I haven't known about that baby until now! It must be my fault that she was not drawn to tell me. But I'm afraid I wasn't drawn to her just at first.”

Yet Dr. Lavendar was not altogether at fault. This newcomer in Old Chester was still a stranger to everybody, except to Sam Wright's Sam and to William King. To be sure, as soon as she was settled in her house Old Chester had called and asked her to tea, and was confused and annoyed because its invitations were not accepted. Furthermore, she did not return the calls. She went to church, but not very regularly, and she never stopped to gossip in the vestibule or the church-yard. Even with Dr. Lavendar she was remote. The first time he went to see her he asked, with his usual directness, one or two questions: Did Mr. Pryor live in Mercer? No; he had business that brought him there occasionally. Where did he live? In Philadelphia.

Had she any relatives in this part of the world--except her brother?

No, none; none anywhere. Was Mr. Pryor married? Yes. Had he any family? One daughter; his wife was dead. ”And you have lost your husband?” Dr. Lavendar said, gently. ”This is a lonely life for you here, I am afraid.”

But she said oh, no; not at all; she liked the quiet. Then, with faint impatience as if she did not care to talk about her own affairs, she added that she had always lived in the East; ”but I find it very pleasant here,” she ended vaguely.

Dr. Lavendar had gone away uneasy and puzzled. Why didn't she live with her brother? Family differences no doubt. Curious how families fall out! ”You'd think they'd be glad to hang together,” the solitary old man thought; ”and they are not necessarily bad folk who quarrel.

Look at Sam and his boy. Both of 'em good as gold. But it's in the blood there,” he said to himself sighing.

Sam and his son were not bad folk. The boy had nothing bad about him; nothing worse than an unexpectedness that had provided Old Chester with smiles for many years. ”No; he is not bad; I have seen to _that_,” his father used to say. ”He's hardly been out of my sight twenty-four hours at a time. And I put my foot down on college with all its temptations. He's good--if he's nothing else!” And certainly Samuel Wright was good too. Everybody in Old Chester said so. He said so himself. ”I, my dear Eliza, have nothing with which to reproach myself,” he used to tell his wife ponderously in moments of conjugal unbending. ”I have done my duty. I always do my duty; under all circ.u.mstances. I am doing my duty now by Sam.”

This was when he and his son fell out on one point or another, as they had begun to do as soon as young Sam learned to talk; and all because the father insisted upon furnis.h.i.+ng the boy with his own most excellent principles and theories, instead of letting the lad manufacture such things for himself. Now when Sam was twenty-three the falling-out had become chronic. No doubt it was in the blood, as Dr.

Lavendar said. Some thirty years before, Sam senior, then a slim and dreamy youth, light-hearted and given to writing verses, had fallen out with his father, old Benjamin Wright; fallen out so finally that in all these years since, the two men, father and son, had not spoken one word to each other. If anybody might have been supposed to know the cause of that thirty-year-old feud it was Dr. Lavendar. He certainly saw the beginning of it....

One stormy March evening Samuel Wright, then twenty-four years old, knocked at the Rectory door; Dr. Lavendar, s.h.i.+elding his lamp from the wind with one hand, opened it himself.

”Why, Sam, my boy,” he said and stopped abruptly. He led the way into his study and put the lamp down on the table. ”Something is the matter?”

”Yes.”

”What is it, Samuel?”