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Page 15
"Nothing, except the race is at a finish, and I am caught as I always
am," replied Doctor Gordon.
"The race--" repeated James vaguely.
"Yes, the race with myself. Myself has caught up with me, God help me,
and I am in its clutches. The time may come when you will try to race
with self, my boy. Let me tell you, you will never win. You will tire
yourself out, and make a damned idiot of yourself for nothing. I shall
race again to-morrow. I never learn the lesson, but perhaps you can, you
are young. Well, come along. Please be as quiet as you can when you go
into the house. My sister may be asleep. She is perfectly well, but she
is a little nervous. I need not repeat my request that you do not
mention your adventure with Clemency this afternoon to her."
"Certainly not," said James. He walked on beside the doctor, and entered
the house, more and more mystified. James was not sure, but he thought
he heard the faintest little moan from upstairs. He glanced at Doctor
Gordon's face, and it was again the face of the man whom he had seen
before going to Georgie K.'s.
CHAPTER III
The next morning after breakfast, at which Mrs. Ewing did not appear,
Doctor Gordon observed that she always took her rolls and coffee in bed.
James followed Doctor Gordon into his office. Clemency, who had presided
at the coffee urn, had done so silently, and looked, so James thought,
rather sulky, as if something had gone wrong. Directly James was in the
office, the doctor's man, Aaron, appeared. He was a tall, lank
Jerseyman, incessantly chewing. His lean, yellow jaws appeared to have
acquired a permanent rotary motion, but he had keen eyes of intelligence
upon the doctor as he gave his orders.
"Put in the team," said Gordon. "We are going to Haver's Corner. Old Sam
Edwards is pretty low, and I ought to have gone there yesterday, but I
didn't know whether that child with diphtheria at Tucker's Mill would
live the day out. Now he has seen the worst of it, thank the Lord! But
to-day I must go to Haver's. I want to make good time, for there's
something going on this afternoon, and I want an hour off if I can get
it." Again the expression of simple jocularity was over the man's face,
and James remembered what he had said the night before about again
running a race with himself the next day.
After Aaron had gone out Gordon turned to James. He pointed to his great
medicine-case on the table. "You might see to it that the bottles are
all filled," he said. "You will find the medicines yonder." He pointed
to the shelf. "I have to speak to Clemency before I go."
James obeyed. As he worked filling the bottles he heard dimly Gordon's
voice talking to Clemency on the other side of the wall. The girl seemed
to be expostulating.
When Doctor Gordon returned Aaron was at his heels with an immense
bottle containing a small quantity of red fluid. "S'pose you'll want
this filled?" he said to Gordon with a grin which only disturbed for a
second his rotary jaws.
"Oh, yes, of course," replied Gordon, "we want the aqua."
James stared at him as he poured a little red-colored liquid from one of
the bottles on the shelves into the big one. "Now fill it up from the
pump, and put it in the buggy; be sure the cork is in tight," he said to
Aaron.
Gordon looked laughingly at James when the man had gone. "I infer that
you are wondering what 'aqua' may be," he said.
"I was brought up to think it was water," said James.
"So it is, water pure and simple, with a little coloring matter thrown
in. Bless you, boy, the people around here want their medicines by the
quart, and if they had them by the quart, good-by to the doctor's job,
and ho for the undertaker! So the doctor is obliged to impose upon the
credulity of the avariciously innocent, and dilute the medicine. Bless
you, I have patients who would accuse me of cheating if I prescribed
less than a cupful of medicine at a time. They have to be humored. After
all, they are a harmless, good lot, but stiffened with hereditary ideas,
worse than by rheumatism. If I should give a few drops in half a glass
of water, and order a teaspoonful at a time, I should fly in the face of
something which no mortal man can conquer, sheer heredity. The
grandfathers and great-grandfathers of these people took their physic on
draft, the children must do likewise. Sometimes I even think the
medicine would lose its effect if taken in any other way. Nobody can
estimate the power of a fixed idea upon the body. All the same, it is a
confounded nuisance carrying around the aqua. I will confess, although I
see the necessity of yielding, that I have less patience with men's
stiff-necked stupidity than I have with their sins."
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