Worcester Democrat and the ledger-enterprise. (Pocomoke City, Md.) 1921-1953, 1942-07-03
CHAPTER XIV

She watched him. He lowered over
their stiffness and frivolity like a
young giant, but when they found out
what he was, they affected to find it
slightly humorous.
"A doctor! You don't look like
one"
"Why not?"
"Well, where's the good old beard,
or whatever it isl"
GIVE me time, can't you?"
He was indulgent, like some big
mastiff with puppies playing about
him, but he was not entirely comfort
able among them. 1t was not only
that they disliked illness and there
fore his profession, or even that
laughing at thing the mind does not
comprehend is one method of over
coming a sense of inferiority. 1t was
because they had nothing in common
with him or thought so; as if he be
longed to a class apart, he thought
resentfully. AS if he never had play
ed a game of golf, or football at col
Iege; as if, indeed, having become a
doctor, he had in some strange way
become less a man.
Looking back later on, all that ne
was to see was that he had not been
entirely fair to them or to himself;
and that the real gulf lay, not in
their failure to recognize that medi-
cine was a science-they respected
science-but between their frivolity
and his own life-and-death obligation
to society.
Girls and young women drinking
tea or sherry, men with highballs in
their hands, some one banging
piano, distracted couples in corners or
on the stairs, and tall devil-may-
care youth called Jerry Ames hang
ing over Beverly as if she belonged
to him-that was his memory of
those afternoons at the Lewis house.
Then one night he was to go there
alone, and Beverly had promised him
a quiet evening; and of all things on
earth he had fallen asleep on street
car and Weakened at the end of the
line, miles out of town.
He telephoned as soon as he could,
but she was annoyed and showed it.
"What in the world happened?
Where are your"
81 don't know exactly"
"You don't know?"
"Only approximately. You see, l
was on a car, hurrying home for a
divine evening with you. Then I shut
my eyes for a minute-only minute
and when l opened them again, |
was here. The magic carpet. Nd
less"
"You went to sleep?" she said in
credulously. "That's not very flat
tering to me, is it? Of course if you
think it's funny"
Funny! My dear girl, I'm laugh
ing for fear I'll weep"
She had laughed, too, at that, but
he knew her pride, and she had not
repeated the invitation -.
After all, what was he to her or
to that group around her, but some
thing between a butcher and a glori-
fled midwife? Young Ames grin
ming at him.
How's the baby business these
days?"
still paying dividends"
"By Jove, you fellows have a cinch.
You get us coming and going. Even
nature works for your
Eve have to help her bit now and
then"
Better change your mind and have
a drink"
81 have some calls to make. I'll
take tea instead"
And even that, his inability to drink
during working hours, marking him
off, setting him aside.
Not coherent think, all this. 1t was
a series of pictures in his mind: of
Beverly, cool and lovely, trying to
marshal her disorderly horde, of oc-
casional glimpses of her mother, and
even one encounter with Staunton
Lewis in the hall, and his own sudden
rigidity when he remembered Jake.
pretty noisy crowd, Doctor"