Miss Rosebury had, and as she rang she smiled with satisfaction at being able to supply the wants of the bright little man who had been so true a friend to her brother in the days gone by.
“Thank you, Miss Rosebury. Tumbler – water. Thanks. The lemon is, I think, the king of fruits, and invaluable to man. Deliciously acid, a marvellous quencher of thirst, a corrective, highly aromatic, a perfect boon. I would leave all the finest wines in the world for a lemon.”
“Then you believe all intoxicating drinks to be bad, doctor?” said Miss Rosebury, eagerly.
“Except whiskey, my dear madam,” said the doctor, with a twinkle of the eye.
“Ah!” said Miss Rosebury, and the eager smile upon her lips faded; but as she saw the zest with which the doctor rolled the lemon soft, and after cutting it in half, squeezed the juice and pulp into his glass, she relaxed a little, and directly afterwards began to beam, as the doctor suddenly exclaimed:
“There, madam, smell my hands! There’s scent! Talk of eau-de-cologne, and millefleurs, and jockey club! Nothing to it! But come, Arthur, you don’t tell me about yourself.”
“About myself,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling blandly; “I have nothing to tell. You have seen my village; you have looked at my church; you have been through my garden; and you have had a rummage in my study. There is my life.”
“A blessed one – a happy one, my dear Arthur. A perfect little home, presided over by a lady whose presence shows itself at every turn. Miss Rosebury,” said the doctor, rising, “when I think of my own vagabond life, journeying here and there with my regiment through heat and cold, in civilisation and out, and after many wanderings, come back to this peaceful spot, this little haven of rest, I see what a happy man my old friend must be, and I envy him with all my heart.”
He reseated himself, and Miss Rosebury’s lips ceased to be compressed into a tight line; and as she smiled and nodded pleasantly, she glanced across at her brother, to see if he would speak, before replying that, pleasant as their home was, they had their troubles in the parish.
“And I have no end of trouble with Arthur,” she continued. “He is so terribly forgetful!”
“He always was, my dear madam,” said the little doctor. “If you wanted him to keep an appointment in the old college days you had to write it down upon eight pieces of paper, and place one in each of his pockets, and pin the eighth in his hat. Then you might, perhaps, see him at the appointed time.”
“Oh, no, no, Harry! too bad – too bad!” murmured the Reverend Arthur, smiling and shaking his head.
“Well, really, Arthur,” said his sister, “I don’t think there is much exaggeration in what Dr Bolter says.”
“I am very sorry,” said the Reverend Arthur, meekly. “I suppose I am far from perfect.”
“My dear old boy, you are perfect enough. You are just right; and though your dear sister here gives you a good scolding sometimes, I’ll be bound to say she thinks you are the finest brother under the sun!”
Miss Rosebury left her chair with a very pleasant smile upon her lips, and a twinkling in the eyes that had the effect of making her look ten years younger.
“I am going into the drawing-room,” she said, in a quick little decided way. “Arthur, dear, I daresay Dr Bolter would like to smoke.”
“But, my dear madam, it would be profanity here.”
“Then you shall be profane, doctor,” said the little lady, nodding and smiling, “but don’t let Arthur smoke. He tried once before when he had a friend to dinner, and it made him feel very, very sick.”
The Reverend Arthur raised his eyebrows in a deprecating way, and then shook his head sadly.
“Then I will not lure him on to indulgence in such a bad habit, Miss Rosebury,” said the little doctor. “In fact, I feel that I ought not to indulge myself.”
“Well, I really think it is very shocking, doctor!” said Miss Rosebury, merrily. “You, a medical man, and you have confessed to a love for whiskey, and now for tobacco.”
“No, no; no, no!” he cried holding up his hands. “They are nauseous medicines that I take to do me good.”
“Indeed!” said the little lady, lingering in the room, and hanging about her brother’s chair as if loth to go; and there was a very sarcastic ring in her voice.
“Oh, be merciful, Miss Rosebury!” said the doctor, laughing. “I am only a weak man – a solitary wanderer upon the face of the earth! I have no pleasant home. I have no sister to keep house.”
“And keep you in order,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling pleasantly.
“And to keep me in order!” cried the doctor. “Mine’s a hard life, Miss Rosebury, and with all a man’s vanity – a little man’s vanity, for we little men have a great deal of conceit to make up for our want of stature – I think I do deserve a few creature comforts.”
“Which you shall have while you stay, doctor; so now light your cigar, for I’ll be bound to say you have a store of the little black rolls somewhere about you.”
“I confess,” he said, smiling, “I carry them in the same case with a few surgical instruments.”
“But I think we’ll go into the little greenhouse, Mary,” said the Reverend Arthur. “I feel sure Harry Bolter would not mind.”
“Mind? My dear Miss Rosebury, I’ll go and sit outside on a gate and smoke if you like.”
“No, no,” said the Reverend Arthur, mildly; “the green fly are rather gaining ground amongst my flowers, and I thought it would kill a few.”
“Dr Bolter is going to smoke his cigar here, where I am about to send in the coffee,” said Miss Rosebury, very decidedly, and the Reverend Arthur directed an apologetic look at his old friend.
“Hah!” ejaculated the little doctor, taking out his case, and selecting a cigar, “that’s just the kind of social tyranny I like. A man, sir, is stronger than a woman in physical development, but weaker in the matter of making up his mind. I never am able to make up mine, and I am quite sure, Arthur, old fellow, that you are very weak in the matter of making up yours: thus, in steps the presiding genius of your house, and bids you do this, and you do it. Yes, Miss Rosebury, I am going to sit here and smoke and – ”
“I am ready with a light, Dr Bolter,” said the little lady, standing close by with a box and a wax-match in her hands.
“No, no, really, my dear madam, I could not think of beginning while you are here.”
Scratch! went the match; there was a flash from the composition, and then Miss Rosebury’s plump taper little fingers held out the tiny wax-light, which was taken; there were a few puffs of bluish smoke, and Dr Bolter sank back in his chair, gazing at the door through which Miss Rosebury had passed.
“Hah!” he ejaculated. “I shall have to be off to-morrow.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried the Reverend Arthur. “I thought you would come and stay a month.”
“Stay a month!” cried the doctor. “Why, my dear boy, what should I be fit for afterwards if I did?”
“Fit for, Harry?”
“Yes, fit for. I should be totally spoiled. I should become a complete domestic sybarite, and no more fit to go back to my tasks in the Malay jungle than to fly. No, Arthur, old fellow, it would never do.”
“We shall keep you as long as you can stay,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling. “But seriously, did you not exaggerate about those young ladies?”
“Not in the least, my dear boy, as far as regards one of them. The other – old Stuart’s little lassie – seems to be all that is pretty and demure. But I don’t suppose there is any harm in Helen Perowne. She is a very handsome girl of about twenty or one-and-twenty,