"Where is Babe?" Dr. McAlister asked, one noon in late May.
"Here." Phebe's voice came from the piazza outside.
"Can you ride over to Bannook Bars, this afternoon?"
"Yes, I suppose so. What for?"
"As substitute for me. Mrs. Richardson has consumed all her pills, and
she wants some more."
"Why doesn't she get them, then? You're not an apothecary."
"She refuses to take them, unless I inspect them personally. These are
the patients who try one's soul, Babe. I would rather deal with Asiatic
cholera than with one fussy old woman with a digestion. They eat hot
bread and fried steak, and then they eat pepsin."
"Start a cooking crusade," Phebe suggested lazily. "Well, I'll go."
"Thank you. You need the ride anyway; it will do you good, for you have
been working too hard lately. I don't want my apprentice to wear herself
out." The doctor patted her shoulder with a fatherly caress; then he
turned to go into the house.
"Give me leave to prescribe for Mrs. Richardson?" she called after him.
"Yes, I make her over to you, and you can date your first case from this
afternoon," he answered.
"No; I'd rather have something a little younger and more interesting. I
will be ready to start, right after lunch."
The office door closed behind her father, and Phebe let her book
slide from her knee, as she rested her tired eyes on the fresh green
lawn before her. For the past three months, she had worked hard,
eager to prove that her home-coming had been inspired by no sudden
whim, still more eager to win her father's professional approval. Her
work was interesting; and yet at times bones and arteries and nerves
had a tendency to pall upon her. She had never dreamed that so much
drudgery would attend the early stages of her professional studies.
She was heartily sick of the theoretical, and she longed for the
practical. She had even teased her father to let her go with him on
his rounds. Instead, he had laughed at her and prescribed a further
course of drudgery.
"Never mind." she said to herself sturdily. "I'll get there, some day. I
won't always carry pills to old women; and when I do get a real case of
my own won't I astonish them all!" And events justified her assertion.
She was still sitting there, dreaming of future deeds, when Allyn came
out to the veranda.
"Oh, Allyn?"
"Hullo, sawbones!"
"What are you going to do this afternoon?"
"Nothing."
"Don't you want to ride with me?"
"Maybe. Where?"
"To Bannock Bars."
"What for?"
"To take some pills to Mrs. Richardson."
"Not much. Mrs. Richardson is frabjous and a gossip."
"What if she is? You needn't talk to her."
But Allyn shook his head.
"Not if I know myself. I'll oil your wheel for you, Babe, and pack your
pills; but I won't go within range of Mrs. Richardson, for she gives me
the creeps."
"She won't hurt you."
"No; but she makes me feel clammy in the spine of my back, and then she
gives me good advice. I'll tell you, Babe, I'll go and get Cis, and we
will ride part way with you. If two people escort you half way, that is
as good as having one of them go all the way. Besides, I never feel quite
easy when I am all alone with you. If anything happened, you might be
moved to experiment on me, and that would be fatal."
On the veranda, after luncheon Allyn and Phebe stood waiting for Cicely.
She came running across the lawn at last, trim and dainty in her short
grey suit.
"I am sorry to be late," she panted; "but I had to stop to chastise
Melchisedek. I found him asleep in Cousin Theodora's fernery. It was so
soft and cool that I suppose it tempted him, this hot day, poor little
man! But aren't you forcing the season, Babe?"
Phebe looked down at her immaculate duck suit.
"No; it is almost the first of June, and so warm. Besides, I am only
going out to the wilderness. I am clean and comfortable, and that is the
main thing."
"Unless we get a shower," Allyn suggested.
Phebe looked up at the sky.
"There isn't a cloud in sight, Allyn. It's not going to rain, I know."
"It's sultry. You can't ever tell about a day like this. Still, if you
want to risk it,--"
"I do." And Phebe mounted her bicycle.
The Savins lay at the western edge of the town. Beyond it, the road to
Bannock Bars led away straight toward the sunset, over hill and hollow,
through stretches of sand and along narrow footpaths. It was a road to
terrify an amateur; but Phebe's riding was strong and steady, and she was
glad to be in the saddle once more, forgetful of her work and only
conscious of the sweet spring life about her. It was only an hour later
that The Savins was ten miles behind her, and she was setting up her
wheel against Mrs. Richardson's stone horse-block.
Mrs. Richardson met her accusingly.
"I hope you've got them pills," she demanded, without any formal
preliminaries.
"Yes, my father has sent them."
"I wrote for them, day before yesterday. I thought sure they'd come
yesterday."
"He was busy," Phebe said curtly, as she took off her sailor hat and
fanned herself.
"Jim Sykes said he see him drivin' off over Wisdom way."
"Yes, he had a case there, an important case." Phebe's head was tilted at
an aggressive angle.
"I guess I was some important, or he'd have said so, if he'd see me, last
night. I had a bad spell, and like to fainted."
"What had you been eating?" Phebe inquired, with a sudden access of
professional severity.
"Be you his youngest girl?" Mrs. Richardson asked rather irrelevantly.
"Yes."
"The one that was in Paris?"
"Yes."
"I wonder at your father's lettin' you go. They say it's an awful wicked
city, and I hear it's nip and tuck whether a person comes home as good as
she went."
"I didn't find it so."
"Maybe not. Still, it's risky and I don't think much of folks that don't
find America good enough for 'em. You look hot. Come in and get a drink
of water."
Inside the house and with a glass of water in her hand, Phebe felt that
it devolved upon her to make some efforts at conversation.
"You said you were worse, last night; didn't you? What were the
symptoms?" she asked, between her sips.
"What's generally the symptoms? I felt sick and wanted to keel over."
"Had you been--?"
"No; I hadn't. You tell your father that I'll tell him about it, when he
comes. I ain't goin' to be doctored by hearsay. Did you see Sol Bassitt's
barn, as you come over the hill?"
"I came by the lower road."
"What did you do that for? It's a good mile further."
"Yes; but it's better riding, that way."
"You'd better go back over the hill. The barn's worth seein', the best
one this side of town." Mrs. Richardson rocked to and fro in exultation
at having some one to listen to her month's accumulation of gossip.
Bannock Bars was an isolated hamlet, and visitors were few. "Sol's girl,
Fannie, has gone to Oswego for a week. She's had scarlet fever, and it
left her ailin'. It's too bad, for she is a likely girl."
"Very likely," Phebe assented, half under her breath.
"What?"
"I said it was extremely probable."
"What was?" Mrs. Richardson glared at her guest who was tranquilly waving
a palm-leaf fan.
"That Fannie is a good girl."
"Well, she is," Mrs. Richardson returned shortly.
There was a silence, while Phebe inspected the black cambric binding of
her fan, and tried to gather energy to go out into the hot sun once more.
Mrs. Richardson had rocked herself into more placid humor.
"They've got a boarder over to Sykes's," she resumed.
"Have they?" Phebe spoke indifferently. Bannock Bars was too near town
for her to realize how countrified it was, how the coming of a single
stranger could stir the placid current of its existence.
"He's from New York, Bartlett is his name, or some such thing. They say
he's a music feller."
"A what?" Phebe wondered whether Mrs. Richardson had reference to a
member of a German band. The words suggested something of the kind.
"A feller that writes music. I don't know anything about it only what
they say. Anyhow, he's brought a pianner with him, and they say he bangs
away on it like all possessed, and then stops short and scolds. I went
past there, one day, when the windows was open, and I heard him thumpin'
and tiddlin' away for dear life. It didn't seem to me there was much tune
to it, nor time neither; you couldn't so much as tell where one line left
off and the next begun."
Phebe's fan slid out of her lap, and, as she stooped to pick it up, she
dropped her handkerchief.
"Have you seen him?" she asked, when she was upright once more.
"How?"
"Have you ever seen this Mr. Bartlett?"
"Yes. He goes round in one of these short-pant suits and great coarse
stockin's and shoes, and he never acts as if he knew what he was about.
Half-baked, I call him. He holds his head like this, and he struts along
as if Bannock Bars wa'n't half good enough for him. Mis' Sykes says he
ain't a mite fussy, though, takes what she gives him and don't complain.
Land! If he can stand Eulaly Sykes's cookin', he must be tough."
"Perhaps he will keel over, some day," Phebe suggested.
"I should think he would. But then, they say folks like him eat all sorts
of things at night suppers, so I suppose he is used to it." She rocked in
silence, for a moment; then she went on, "What do you find to do with
yourself, now you're home again? You was with Mis' Farrington's folks;
wasn't you, she that was Theodora McAlister?"
"Yes."
"She does a good deal of writin', I hear. Does she get much out of it?"
Phebe hesitated, assailed by doubts as to how large a story Mrs.
Richardson would swallow, and her hostess swept on,--
"She's spreadin' herself a good deal, and it can't all be her earnin's.
Do you take after her?"
"No; I am studying medicine."
"I want to know! What for?"
"To be a doctor, I suppose." Phebe rose and put on her hat.
Mrs. Richardson took a step towards her.
"You don't want a skeleton; do you?" she asked. "I've got one I'd
sell cheap."
For one instant, Phebe hesitated. Unexpected as was the offer, it
appealed to her. There was a certain dignity in having one's own
skeleton; it was the first step toward professional life. That one
instant's hesitation settled the matter, for Mrs. Richardson saw it and
was swift to take advantage of it.
"It belonged to His sister's husband," she said, with a jerk of her head
toward the portrait of her late husband. "He was a doctor and, when he
died, all his trumpery was brought here and stowed away in our garret.
It's as good as new, and you can have it for five dollars."
"I--don't--know," Phebe said slowly.
Mrs. Richardson interposed.
"I don't want to be hard on you. 'Tain't a very big one, and it ain't
strung up," she said persuasively. "You can have it for three. It's a
splendid chance for you."
Phebe yielded.
"Well, I'll take it, if it is all there."
"I'll get it, and you can let your father count it up. I'm willing to
leave it to him." And Mrs. Richardson went hurrying out of the room.
She was gone for some time. When she came back again she bore in her
arms a bundle, large, knobby and misshapen. It was wrapped in
newspapers which had cracked away here and there over the end of a rib;
but it was enclosed in a network of strings that crossed and
crisscrossed like a hammock.
"I thought you might just as well take it right along with you," she
said. "You can send me the money in a letter, if it's all right, but
land knows when you will be here again, and I hain't got anybody to
send it by."
Phebe looked appalled. In a long experience of bicycling, she had scorned
a carrier, and she stood firmly opposed to the idea of converting her
wheel into a luggage van.
"I can't carry that," she said.
"Yes, you can. Just string it over your forepiece and it will go all
right. It ain't heavy for anything so bulky. I'll help you tie it on."
And she prepared to execute her offer.
"Oh, don't! At least, I'm much obliged; but--Oh, dear, if I must take
it, I suppose I must; but I think I'd better tie it on, myself."
"Just as you like. You'd better hurry up a little, though, for I
shouldn't wonder if it rained before sundown."
"Rain? Then I can't take this thing." Phebe paused, with the string
half tied.
"Oh, I'll risk it. Besides if you don't take it, there's a man in
Greenway that will."
Phebe looked at her hostess, shut her teeth, jerked the knot tight, and
was silent; but there was a dangerous gleam in her eyes, as she mounted
and rode away, with her three-dollar skeleton clattering on the
handle-bars before her.