wagon, had crossed the bridge; now it was whirling swiftly up the road.
She stationed herself in the entry, to lose no step in his familiar
progress. The horse came lightly along, beating out a pleasant tune of
easy haste. He was drawn up at the gate, and the doctor threw out his
weight, and jumped buoyantly to the ground. There was the brief pause
of reaching for his medicine-case, and then, with that firm step whose
rhythm she knew so well, he was walking up the path. Involuntarily, as
Dorcas awaited him, she put her hand to her heart with one of those
gestures that seem so melodramatic and are so real; she owned to
herself, with a throb of appreciative delight, how the sick must warm
at his coming. This new doctor of Tiverton was no younger than Dorcas
herself, yet with his erect carriage and merry blue eye she seemed to
be not only of another temperament, but another time. It had never
struck him that they were contemporaries. Once he had told Phoebe, in a
burst of affection and pitying praise, that he should have liked Miss
Dorcas for a maiden aunt.

"Good evening," he said, heartily, one foot on the sill. "How's the
patient?"

At actual sight of him, her tremor vanished, and she answered very
quietly,--

"Father's asleep. I thought you wouldn't want he should be disturbed;
so I came out."

The doctor took off his hat, and pushed back his thick, unruly hair.

"Yes, that was right," he said absently, and pinched a spray of
southernwood that grew beside the door. "How has he seemed?"