FullReads

“Wherefore,” said the Bonnie Lassie, “your appellant prays that you be a dear, good, stern, forbidding Dominie and go over to Number 37 and ask him what he means by it, anyway, and tell him he’s got to stop it.”

Now, the Bonnie Lassie holds the power of the high, the middle, and the low justice over all Our Square by the divine right of loveliness and kindliness. So that evening I went while the Little Red Doctor, as a self-constituted Committee in Waiting, sat on my bench. Stepfather Time himself opened the door to me.

“What might they call you, sir, if I may ask?” he inquired with timid courtesy.

“They might call me the Dominie hereabouts. And they do.”

“I have heard of you.” He motioned me to a seat in the bare little room, alive with tickings and clickings. “You have lived long here, sir?”

“Long.”

From some interminable distance a voice of time mocked me with a subtle and solemn mockery: “Long. Long. Long.”

My host waited for the clock to finish before he spoke again. As I afterward discovered, this was his invariable custom.

“I, too, am an old man,” he murmured.

“A hardy sixty, I should guess.”

“A long life. Might I ask you a question, sir,’ as to the folk in this Square?” He hesitated a moment after I had nodded. “Are they, as one might say, friendly? Neighborly?”

I was a little taken aback. “We are not an intrusive people.”

“No one,” he said, “has been to see my clocks.”

I began to perceive that this was a sad little man, and to mislike my errand. “You live here quite alone?” I asked.

“Oh, no!” said he quickly. “You see, I have Willy Woolly. Pardon me. I have not yet presented him.”

At his call the fluffy poodle ambled over to me, sniffed at my extended hand, and, rearing, set his paws on my knee.

“He greets you as a friend,” said my new acquaintance in a tone which indicated that I had been signally honored. “I trust that we shall see you here often, Mr. Dominie. Would you like to inspect my collection now?”

Here was my opening. “The fact is–” I began, and stopped from sheer cowardice. The job was too distasteful. To wound that gentle pride in his possessions which was obviously the life of the singular being before me–I couldn’t do it. “The fact is,” I repeated, “I–I have a friend outside waiting for me. The Little Red Doctor–er–Dr. Smith, you know.”

“A physician?” he said eagerly. “Would he come in, do you think? Willy Woolly has been quite feverish to-day.”

“I’ll ask him,” I replied, and escaped with that excuse.

When I broke it to the Little Red Doctor, the mildest thing he said to me was to ask me why I should take him for a dash-binged vet!

Appeals to his curiosity finally overpersuaded him, and now it was my turn to wait on the bench while he invaded the realm of the Voices. Happily for me the weather was amiable; it was nearly two hours before my substitute reappeared. He then tried to sneak away without seeing me. Balked in this cowardly endeavor, he put on a vague professional expression and observed that it was an obscure case.

“For a man of sixty,” I began, “Mr. Merivale–“

“Who?” interrupted the Little Red Doctor; “I’m speaking of the dog.”

“Have you, then,” I inquired in insinuating accents, “become a dash-binged vet?”

“A man can’t be a brute, can he!” he retorted angrily. “When that animated mop put up his paws and stuck his tongue out like a child–“

“I know,” I said. “You took on a new patient. Probably gratis,” I added, with malice, for this was one of the Little Red Doctor’s notoriously weak points.

“Just the same, he’s a fool dog.”

“On the contrary, he is a person of commanding intellect and nice social discrimination,” I asserted, recalling Willy Woolly’s flattering acceptance of myself.

“A faker,” asseverated my friend. “He pretends to see things.”