Dr. Sevier Part 10

"Take a seat," he said, the next morning, and drew up a chair sociably before the returned applicant. "Now, suppose I was to give you those books, all in confusion as they are, what would you do first of all?"

Mary fortunately had asked the same question the night before, and her husband was entirely ready with an answer which they had studied out in bed.

"I should send your deposit-book to bank to be balanced, and, without waiting for it, I should begin to take a trial-balance off the books. If I didn't get one pretty soon, I'd drop that for the time being, and turn in and render the accounts of everybody on the books, asking them to examine and report."

"All right," said the merchant, carelessly; "we'll try you."

"Sir?" Richling bent his ear.

"_All right; we'll try you!_ I don't care much about recommendations. I generally most always make up my opinion about a man from looking at him. I'm that sort of a man."

He smiled with inordinate complacency.

So, week by week, as has been said already, the winter pa.s.sed,--Richling on one side of the town, hidden away in his work, and Dr. Sevier on the other, very positive that the "young pair" must have returned to Milwaukee.

At length the big books were readjusted in all their hundreds of pages, were balanced, and closed. Much satisfaction was expressed; but another man had meantime taken charge of the new books,--one who influenced business, and Richling had nothing to do but put on his hat.

However, the house cheerfully recommended him to a neighboring firm, which also had disordered books to be righted; and so more weeks pa.s.sed.

Happy weeks! Happy days! Ah, the joy of them! John bringing home money, and Mary saving it!

"But, John, it seems such a pity not to have stayed with A, B, & Co.; doesn't it?"

"I don't think so. I don't think they'll last much longer."

And when he brought word that A, B, & Co. had gone into a thousand pieces Mary was convinced that she had a very far-seeing husband.

By and by, at Richling's earnest and restless desire, they moved their lodgings again. And thus we return by a circuit to the morning when Dr.

Sevier, taking up his slate, read the summons that bade him call at the corner of St. Mary and Prytania streets.

CHAPTER IX.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS.

The house stands there to-day. A small, pinched, frame, ground-floor-and-attic, double tenement, with its roof sloping toward St. Mary street and overhanging its two door-steps that jut out on the sidewalk. There the Doctor's carriage stopped, and in its front room he found Mary in bed again, as ill as ever. A humble German woman, living in the adjoining half of the house, was attending to the invalid's wants, and had kept her daughter from the public school to send her to the apothecary with the Doctor's prescription.

"It is the poor who help the poor," thought the physician.

"Is this your home?" he asked the woman softly, as he sat down by the patient's pillow. He looked about upon the small, cheaply furnished room, full of the neat makeshifts of cramped housewifery.

"It's mine," whispered Mary. Even as she lay there in peril of her life, and flattened out as though Juggernaut had rolled over her, her eyes shone with happiness and scintillated as the Doctor exclaimed in undertone:--

"Yours!" He laid his hand upon her forehead. "Where is Mr. Richling?"

"At the office." Her eyes danced with delight. She would have begun, then and there, to tell him all that had happened,--"had taken care of herself all along," she said, "until they began to move. In moving, had been _obliged_ to overwork--hardly _fixed_ yet"--

But the Doctor gently checked her and bade her be quiet.

"I will," was the faint reply; "I will; but--just one thing, Doctor, please let me say."

"Well?"

"John"--

"Yes, yes; I know; he'd be here, only you wouldn't let him stay away from his work."

She smiled a.s.sent, and he smiled in return.

"'Business is business,'" he said.

She turned a quick, sparkling glance of affirmation, as if she had lately had some trouble to maintain that ancient truism. She was going to speak again, but the Doctor waved his hand downward soothingly toward the restless form and uplifted eyes.

"All right," she whispered, and closed them.

The next day she was worse. The physician found himself, to use his words, "only the tardy attendant of offended nature." When he dropped his finger-ends gently upon her temple she tremblingly grasped his hand.

"You'll save me?" she whispered.

"Yes," he replied; "we'll do that--the Lord helping us."

A glad light shone from her face as he uttered the latter clause.

Whereat he made haste to add:--

"I don't pray, but I'm sure you do."

She silently pressed the hand she still held.

On Sunday he found Richling at the bedside. Mary had improved considerably in two or three days. She lay quite still as they talked, only shifting her glance softly from one to the other as one and then the other spoke. The Doctor heard with interest Richling's full account of all that had occurred since he had met them last together. Mary's eyes filled with merriment when John told the droller part of their experiences in the hard quarters from which they had only lately removed. But the Doctor did not so much as smile. Richling finished, and the physician was silent.

"Oh, we're getting along," said Richling, stroking the small, weak hand that lay near him on the coverlet. But still the Doctor kept silence.

"Of course," said Richling, very quietly, looking at his wife, "we mustn't be surprised at a backset now and then. But we're getting on."

Mary turned her eyes toward the Doctor. Was he not going to a.s.sent at all? She seemed about to speak. He bent his ear, and she said, with a quiet smile:--

"'When the wind blows, the cradle will rock.'"

The physician gave only a heavy-eyed "Humph!" and a faint look of amus.e.m.e.nt.

"What did she say?" said Richling; the words had escaped his ear. The Doctor repeated it, and Richling, too, smiled.

Yet it was a good speech,--why not? But the patient also smiled, and turned her eyes toward the wall with a disconcerted look, as if the smile might end in tears. For herein lay the very difficulty that always brought the Doctor's carriage to the door,--the cradle would not rock.