Part 1 (2/2)
”They put a tongue in your head, Martie, sure enough!” he said, gathering up the reins.
”It was all they did put, then!” Martie giggled.
The girls all liked Doc' Ben. A widower, rich enough now to take only what practice he pleased, simple in his tastes, he lived with his old servant, his horse and cow, his dog and cat, chickens and bees, pigeons and rabbits, in a comfortable, shabby establishment in an unfas.h.i.+onable part of town. Monroe described him as a ”regular character.” His jouncing, fat figure--with tobacco ash spilled on his spotted vest, and stable mud on his high-laced boots--was familiar in all her highways and byways. His mellow voice, shot with humorous undertones even when he was serious, touched with equal readiness upon Plato, the habits of bees, the growth of fungus, fas.h.i.+ons, Wordsworth, the Civil War, or the construction of chimneys. He was something of a philosopher, something of a poet, something of a reformer.
Martie, watching him out of sight, said to herself that she really must go down soon and see old Dr. Ben, poke among his old books, feed his pigeons, and scold him for his untidy ways. The girl's generous imagination threw a veil of romance over his life; she told Sally that he was like some one in an English story.
After he had gone, the girls idled into the Town Library, a large room with worn linoleum on the floor, and with level sunlight streaming in the dusty windows. At the long table devoted to magazines a few readers were sitting; others hovered over the table where books just returned were aligned; and here and there, before the dim bookcases that lined the walls, still others loitered, now and then picking a book from the shelves, glancing at it, and restoring it to its place. The room was warm and close with the smell of old books. The whisking of pages, and occasionally a sibilant whisper, were its only sounds. From the ceiling depended signs, bearing the simple command: ”Silence”; but this did not prevent the girls from whispering to the energetic, gray-haired woman who presided at the desk.
”h.e.l.lo, girls!” said Miss f.a.n.n.y Breck cheerfully, in the low tone she always used in the library. ”Want anything to read? You don't? What are you reading, Martie?”
”I'm reading 'Idylls of the King,'” Sally said.
”I've got 'Only the Governess,'” added Grace.
”I didn't ask either of you,” Miss Breck said with the brisk amused air of correction that made the girls a little afraid of her. ”It's Martie here I'm interested in. I'm going to scold her, too. Are you reading that book I gave you, Martie?”
Martie, as Grace and Sally turned away, raised smiling eyes. But at Miss f.a.n.n.y's keen, kindly look she was smitten with a sudden curious inclination toward tears. She was keenly sensitive, and she felt an undeserved rebuke.
”Don't like it?” asked the librarian, disposing of an interruption with that casual ease that always fascinated Martie. To see Miss f.a.n.n.y seize four books from the hands that brought them into her range of vision, flip open the four covers with terrific speed, manipulate various paper slips and rubber stamps with energy and certainty, vigorously copy certain mysterious letters and numbers, toss the discarded books into a large basket at her elbow and then, for the first time, as she handed the selected books to the applicant, glance up with her smile and whispered ”Good afternoon,” was a real study in efficiency.
”I don't understand it,” Martie smiled.
”Did you read it?” persisted the older woman.
”Well--not much.” Martie had, in fact, hardly opened the book, an excellent collection of some twenty essays for girls under the general t.i.tle ”Choosing a Life Work.”
”Listen. Why don't you study the Cutter system, and familiarize yourself a little with this work, and come in here with me?” asked Miss f.a.n.n.y, in her firm, pus.h.i.+ng voice.
”When?” Martie asked, considering.
”Well--I can't say when. I'm no oracle, my dear. But some day the grave and reverend seigneurs on my Board may give me an a.s.sistant, I suppose.”
”Oh--I know--” Martie was vague again. ”What would I get?”
Miss f.a.n.n.y's harsh cheeks and jaw stiffened, her eyes half closed, as she bit her lip in thought.
”Fifteen, perhaps,” she submitted.
Martie dallied with the pleasing thought of having fifteen dollars of her own each month.
”But can't Miss f.a.n.n.y make you feel as if you were back in school?” she asked, when the girls were again in Main Street. ”I'd just as lieves be in the lib'ary as anywheres,” she added.
”I'd rather be in the box factory,” Grace said. ”More money.”
”More work, too!” Martie suggested. ”Come on, let's go to Bonestell's!”
Other persons of all ages were in the drug store, seated on stools at the high marble counter, or at the little square cherry tables in the dim room at the rear. Drugs were a lesser consideration than brushes, stationery, cameras, candy, cigars, post cards, gum, mirrors, celluloid bureau sets, flower seeds, and rubber toys and rattles, but large gla.s.s flagons of coloured waters duly held the corners of the show windows on the street, and dusty and fly-specked cards advertising patent medicines overlapped each other.
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