The Story of a Doctor's Telephone Part 45

"Hurry to the 'phone for pity's sake!" and he hurried. Mary, following, all out of breath, heard this:

"Two teaspoonfuls." Then the doctor hung up the receiver. He turned to Mary and laughed as he quoted Emerson on the mountain and the mouse.

"I chased you all over the place this afternoon, John, when the 'phone was calling you, and couldn't find you at all. Some people have days to 'appear' but this seems to be your day to disappear. Where were you then?"

"Out in the garage."

"Fascinating spot! I'll know where to look next time. Now come to supper."

CHAPTER XV.

It was October--the carnival time of the year,

When on the ground red apples lie In piles like jewels shining, And redder still on old stone walls Are leaves of woodbine twining.

When comrades seek sweet country haunts, By twos and twos together, And count like misers, hour by hour, October's bright blue weather.

On a lovely afternoon our travelers were driving leisurely along through partially cleared woodland. The doctor had proposed that they take this trip in the new automobile. But Mary had declined with great firmness.

"I will not be hurled along the road in October of all months. What fools these mortals be," she went on. "Last year while driving slowly through the glorious Austrian Tyrol fairly holding my breath with delight, one machine after another whizzed by, the occupants fancying they were 'doing' the Tyrol, I dare say."

Mary looked about her, drinking in deep draughts of the delicious air.

The beautifully-tinted leaves upon every tree and bush, the blue haze in the distance and the dreamful melancholy over all, were delightful to her. The fragrance of wild grapes came to them as they emerged from the woods and Mary said, "Couldn't you wait a minute, John, until I go back and find them? I'll bring you some."

"If you were sick and had sent for a doctor would you like to have him fool around gathering grapes and everything else on his way?"

"No, I wouldn't. I really wouldn't."

They laughed as they sped along the open country road, skirted on either side by a rail fence. From a fence corner here and there arose tall sumac, like candelabra bearing aloft their burning tapers. The poke-weed flung out its royal purple banners while golden-rod and asters were blooming everywhere. Suddenly Mary exclaimed, "I'm going to get out of the buggy this minute."

"What for?"

"To gather those brown bunches of hazelnuts."

"Mary, I positively will not wait for you."

"John, I positively don't want you to wait for me," said Mary, putting her foot on the step, "I'm going to stay here and gather nuts till you come back. See how many there are?" and she sprang lightly to the ground.

"It will be an hour or more before I can get back. I've got to take up that pesky artery."

"It won't seem long. You know I like to be alone."

"Good-bye, then," and the doctor started off.

"Wait! John," his wife called after him. "I haven't a thing to put the nuts in, please throw me the laprobe." The doctor crushed the robe into a sort of bundle and threw it to her.

She spread the robe upon the ground and began plucking the bunches. Her fingers flew nimbly over the bushes and soon she had a pile of the brown treasures. Dear old times came trooping back. She thought of far-off autumn days when she had taken her little wagon and gone out to the hazel bushes growing near her father's house, and filled it to the top and tramped it down and filled it yet again. Then a gray October day came back when three or four girls and boys, all busy in the bushes, talked in awed tones of the great fire--Chicago was burning up! Big, big Chicago, which they had never seen or dreamed of seeing--all because a cow kicked over a lamp.

Mary moved to another clump of bushes. As she worked she thought if she had never known the joy of gathering nuts and wild grapes and persimmons, of wandering through woods and meadows, her childhood would have lost much that is beautiful and best, and her womanhood many of its dearest recollections.

"You're the doctor's wife, ain't ye?"

Mary looked around quite startled. A tall woman in a blue calico dress and a brown gingham sunbonnet was standing there. "I didn't want to scare ye, I guess you didn't see me comin'."

"I didn't know you were coming--yes, I am the doctor's wife."

"We saw ye from the house and supposed he'd gone on to see old man Benning and that you had stopped to pick nuts."

"You guessed it exactly," said Mary with a smile.

"We live about a quarter mile back from the road so I didn't see the doctor in time to stop him."

"Is some one sick at your house, then?"

"Well, my man ain't a doin' right, somehow. He's been ailin' for some time and his left foot and leg is a turnin' blue. I come to see if you could tell me somethin' I could do for it. I'm afraid it's mortifyin'."

Mary's brown eyes opened wide. "Why, my dear woman, I couldn't tell you anything to do. I don't know anything at all about such things."

"I supposed bein' a doctor's wife you'd learnt everything like that."

"I have learned many things by being a doctor's wife, very many things, but what to do with a leg and foot that are mortifying I really could not tell you." Mary turned her face away to hide a laugh that was getting near the surface. "I will have the doctor drive up to the house when he gets back if you wish," she said, turning to her companion.

"Maybe that would be best. Your husband cured me once when I thought nothing would ever get me well again. I think more of him than any other man in the world."

"Thank you. So do I."

She started off and Mary went on gathering nuts, her face breaking into smiles at the queer errand and the restorative power imputed to herself.

"If it is as serious as she thinks, all the doctors in the world can't do much for it, much less one meek and humble doctor's wife. But they could amputate, I suppose, and I'm sure I couldn't, not in a scientific way."

Thus soliloquizing, she went from clump to clump of the low bushes till they were bereft of their fruitage. She looked down well-pleased at the robe with the nuts piled upon it. She drew the corners up and tied her bundle securely. This done she looked down the road where the doctor had disappeared. "I'll just walk on and meet him," she thought. She went leisurely along, stopping now and then to pluck a spray of goldenrod.

When she had gathered quite a bunch she looked at it closely. "You are like some people in this world--you have a pretty name and at a little distance _you_ are pretty: but seen too close you are a disappointment, and more than that you are coa.r.s.e. I don't want you," and she flung them away. She saw dust rising far down the road and hoped it might be the doctor. Yes, it was he, and Bucephalus seemed to know that he was traveling toward home. When her husband came up and she was seated beside him, she said, "You are wanted at that little house over yonder,"

and she told him what had taken place in the hazel bushes. "You're second choice though, they came for me first," she said laughing.

"I wish to thunder you'd gone. They owe me a lot now they'll never pay."

"At any rate, they hold you in very high esteem, John."

"Oh, yes, but esteem b.u.t.ters no bread."

"Well, you'll go, won't you? I told the woman you would."

"Yes, I'll go."

He turned into a narrow lane and in a few minutes they were at the gate.