“1But I’ll lay you a wager all the same that he’s studying the suffrage subject good
and hard.”
“He! Dick!”
“Well?”
“I know he isn’t.”
“Take my wager?”
“Dick says I’ve a whole quart of sporting blood in me. He said that when I took
my first fish off the line all by myself. It was a darling little flounder too,
and I nearly cried because its mouth bled. But anyhow, just to prove it to you,
I will make a bet about it.”
“Good. Now if Dick’s not either reading or has been reading certain books or
pamphlets or articles on woman’s suffrage, I’m to—er—well give you some sort of
a spunk pill to take before that speech of yours. But if he has on the other
hand, you are not to deliver it at all, but on the contrary are to gracefully
and like the little sport you say you are, accede to your husband’s wishes in
the matter, which I don’t doubt will be less harsh by and by.”
“Good!” exclaimed the little lady, smiling for the first time, and extending
her fingers to be shaken.
With the frou-frou rustle of her pretty silk skirt, she swept out of the doctor’s
office, leaving a faint, delicious fragrance behind her that was as feminine as it
was sweet.
The doctor sniffed it audibly, and then:
“It would be a great pity,” he ruminated to himself, “if she should
replace this with the sour stench of doped tobacco!”
XVI
The doctor had not seen his friend, Holt, for several days. So when the latter
turned up unexpectedly on a balmy night in June, he was received with two
outstretched hands of welcome.
“Well, well! Here we are at last. Come right inside. Er-hum! Let me look at
you.”
He had adjusted his glasses firmly, and was examining the other through, them
thoroughly. Apparently well pleased with his scrutiny, he released the glasses
from his nose, and spoke, punctuating his sentences with little movements of his
glasses.
“Holt, if I do say it, who shouldn’t, that medicine of mine is a winner, and no
mistake. You look ten—no fifteen years younger at least.”
“It’s a case of careful grooming, doctor,” said Holt, smiling gravely. “Did
I tell you, my man, Joe Manning is back with me.”
“You ungrateful wretch!” snorted the doctor indignantly, “So you’re giving
the credit to Joe. Here pull up, your chair! Dash it all, I don’t believe
you’ve an atom of humor in your make-up.”
“I used to have,” said the lawyer, musingly.
“Stuff and nonsense! You haven’t lost a blessed thing you haven’t got to-day.
But here—look at this, will you?”
The doctor unrolled the wrappings from about a package which had been delivered
during the day, and spread out on the table several new photographs of Laura.
Holt stared at them a moment in silence, and then, still without speaking, he
picked them up one by one, and looked long and gravely at the pictured face. He
appeared to be in some sort of reverie as he stared at the picture of his client;
but when the doctor spoke he started in his seat almost as if he had been
struck.
“I had these taken for the newspapers,” said the doctor carelessly.
“For the newspapers!” cried Holt. “What do you mean?”
The doctor regarded his friend in pretended astonishment.
“Well, it’s about time,” said he, “that this thing came out in the papers.
It’s bound to, sooner or later, and I insisted to Laura that she have new extra
good photographs taken, so she might look her best in the limelight of
publicity.”
“She consented?” asked Holt incisively. His eyes were fixed upon the
doctor’s face almost as if he could barely wait for the answer.
“Why, of course,” answered the doctor, in his most guileless tone. “Laura’s
nothing but a girl after all you know.”
Holt threw the pictures down upon the table again. Then he got up and walked over
to the window.
“And by the way,” pursued the doctor naturally, as he piled up the
photographs in a neat little heap, “how’s the case proceeding?”
Holt turned about abruptly.
“It’s not going to proceed,” he said, between his teeth. “I—won’t go on
with it.”
“Oh, indeed? Did you ever begin it?” inquired the doctor mildly.
“No. It was impossible—from the first.”
You “took the case.”
“You forced it upon me.”
“Stuff and nonsense! When I told you the circumstances you were keen for
it.”
“I changed my mind.”
“When?”
“Well, from the first. I tell you it was impossible.”
“You mean—your returning to law practice?”
“It was not that.”
He looked at the doctor undecidedly a moment, and then suddenly strode across to
him.
“It was on her account, not mine,” he said.
“You mean—Laura’s?”
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