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CHAPTER III. THE DOCTOR’S MATCH-MAKING

“GOOD-MORNING, Mrs. Barnet,” cried the Doctor, as we drew near a neat farm-house during one of our morning drives.

A tall, healthful young woman, in the bloom of matronly beauty, was feeding chickens at the door. She uttered an exclamation of delight and hurried towards us. Perceiving a stranger in the wagon she paused, with a look of embarrassment.

“My friend, who is spending a few weeks with me,” explained the Doctor.

She greeted me civilly and pressed the Doctor’s hand warmly.

“Oh, it is so long since you have called on us that we have been talking of going up to the village to see you, as soon as Robert can get away from his cornfield. You don’t know how little Lucy has grown. You must stop and see her.”

“She’s coming to see me herself,” replied the Doctor, beckoning to a sweet blue-eyed child in the door-way.

The delighted mother caught up her darling and held her before the Doctor.

“Does n’t she look like Robert?” she inquired. “His very eyes and forehead! Bless me! here he is now.”

A stout, hale young farmer, in a coarse checked frock and broad straw hat, came up from the adjoining field.

“Well, Robert,” said the Doctor, “how do matters now stand with you? Well, I hope.”

“All right, Doctor. We’ve paid off the last cent of the mortgage, and the farm is all free and clear. Julia and I have worked hard; but we’re none the worse for it.”

“You look well and happy, I am sure,” said the Doctor. “I don’t think you are sorry you took the advice of the old Doctor, after all.”

The young wife’s head drooped until her lips touched those of her child.

“Sorry!” exclaimed her husband. “Not we! If there’s anybody happier than we are within ten miles of us. I don’t know them. Doctor, I’ll tell you what I said to Julia the night I brought home that mortgage. ‘Well,’ said I, ‘that debt’s paid; but there’s one debt we can never pay as long as we live.’ ‘I know it,’ says she; ‘but Dr. Singletary wants no better reward for his kindness than to see us live happily together, and do for others what he has done for us.'”

“Pshaw!” said the Doctor, catching up his reins and whip. “You owe me nothing. But I must not forget my errand. Poor old Widow Osborne needs a watcher to-night; and she insists upon having Julia Barnet, and nobody else. What shall I tell her?”

“I’ll go, certainly. I can leave Lucy now as well as not.”

“Good-by, neighbors.”

“Good-by, Doctor.”

As we drove off I saw the Doctor draw his hand hastily across his eyes, and he said nothing for some minutes.

“Public opinion,” said he at length, as if pursuing his meditations aloud,–“public opinion is, in nine cases out of ten, public folly and impertinence. We are slaves to one another. We dare not take counsel of our consciences and affections, but must needs suffer popular prejudice and custom to decide for us, and at their bidding are sacrificed love and friendship and all the best hopes of our lives. We do not ask, What is right and best for us? but, What will folks say of it? We have no individuality, no self-poised strength, no sense of freedom. We are conscious always of the gaze of the many-eyed tyrant. We propitiate him with precious offerings; we burn incense perpetually to Moloch, and pass through his fire the sacred first-born of our hearts. How few dare to seek their own happiness by the lights which God has given them, or have strength to defy the false pride and the prejudice of the world and stand fast in the liberty of Christians! Can anything be more pitiable than the sight of so many, who should be the choosers and creators under God of their own spheres of utility and happiness, self-degraded into mere slaves of propriety and custom, their true natures undeveloped, their hearts cramped and shut up, each afraid of his neighbor and his neighbor of him, living a life of unreality, deceiving and being deceived, and forever walking in a vain show? Here, now, we have just left a married couple who are happy because they have taken counsel of their honest affections rather than of the opinions of the multitude, and have dared to be true to themselves in defiance of impertinent gossip.”