Dr. Breen's Practice. William Dean Howells

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СКАЧАТЬ she came down to the piazza, and stood looking out to sea. The ladies appeared one by one over the edge of the cliff, and came up, languidly stringing their shawls after them, or clasping their novels to their bosoms.

      “There isn't a breath down there,” they said, one after another. The last one added, “Barlow says it's the hottest day he's ever seen here.”

      In a minute Barlow himself appeared at the head of the steps with the ladies' remaining wraps, and confirmed their report in person. “I tell you,” he said, wiping his forehead, “it's a ripper.”

      “It must be an awful day in town,” said one of the ladies, fanning herself with a newspaper.

      “Is that to-day's Advertiser, Mrs. Alger?” asked another.

      “Oh, dear, no! yesterday's. We sha'n't have today's till this afternoon. It shows what a new arrival you are, Mrs. Scott—your asking.”

      “To be sure. But it's such a comfort being where you can see the Advertiser the same morning. I always look at the Weather Report the first thing. I like to know what the weather is going to be.”

      “You can't at Jocelyn's. You can only know what it's been.”

      “Well,” Barlow interposed, jealous for Jocelyn's, “you can most al'ays tell by the look o' things.”

      “Yes,” said one of the ladies; “but I'd rather trust the Weather Report. It's wonderful how it comes true. I don't think there 's anything that you miss more in Europe than our American Weather Report.”

      “I'm sure you miss the oysters,” said another.

      “Yes,” the first admitted, “you do miss the oysters. It was the last of the R months when we landed in New York; and do you know what we did the first thing—? We drove to Fulton Market, and had one of those Fulton Market broils! My husband said we should have had it if it had been July. He used to dream of the American oysters when we were in Europe. Gentlemen are so fond of them.”

      Barlow, from scanning the heavens, turned round and faced the company, which had drooped in several attitudes of exhaustion on the benching of the piazza. “Well, I can most al'ays tell about Jocelyn's as good as the Weather Report. I told Mrs. Maynard here this mornin' that the fog was goin' to burn off.”

      “Burn off?” cried Mrs. Alger. “I should think it had!” The other ladies laughed.

      “And you'll see,” added Barlow, “that the wind 'll change at noon, and we'll have it cooler.”

      “If it's as hot on the water as it is here,” said Mrs. Scott, “I should think those people would get a sunstroke.”

      “Well, so should I, Mrs. Scott,” cordially exclaimed a little fat lady, as if here at last were an opinion in which all might rejoice to sympathize.

      “It's never so hot on the water, Mrs. Merritt,” said Mrs. Alger, with the instructiveness of an old habitude.

      “Well, not at Jocelyn's,” suggested Barlow. Mrs. Alger stopped fanning herself with her newspaper, and looked at him. Upon her motion, the other ladies looked at Barlow. Doubtless he felt that his social acceptability had ceased with his immediate usefulness. But he appeared resolved to carry it off easily. “Well,” he said, “I suppose I must go and pick my peas.”

      No one said anything to this. When the factotum had disappeared round the corner of the house, Mrs. Alger turned her head' aside, and glanced downward with an air of fatigue. In this manner Barlow was dismissed from the ladies' minds.

      “I presume,” said young Mrs. Scott, with a deferential glance at Grace, “that the sun is good for a person with lung-difficulty.”

      Grace silently refused to consider herself appealed to, and Mrs. Merritt said, “Better than the moon, I should think.”

      Some of the others tittered, but Grace looked up at Mrs. Merritt and said, “I don't think Mrs. Maynard's case is so bad that she need be afraid of either.”

      “Oh, I am so glad to hear it!” replied the other. She looked round, but was unable to form a party. By twos or threes they might have liked to take Mrs. Maynard to pieces; but no one cares to make unkind remarks before a whole company of people. Some of the ladies even began to say pleasant things about Mr. Libby, as if he were Grace's friend.

      “I always like to see these fair men when they get tanned,” said Mrs. Alger. “Their blue eyes look so very blue. And the backs of their necks—just like my boys!”

      “Do you admire such a VERY fighting-clip as Mr. Libby has on?” asked Mrs. Scott.

      “It must be nice for summer,” returned the elder lady.

      “Yes, it certainly must,” admitted the younger.

      “Really,” said another, “I wish I could go in the fighting-clip. One does n't know what to do with one's hair at the sea-side; it's always in the way.”

      “Your hair would be a public loss, Mrs. Frost,” said Mrs. Alger. The others looked at her hair, as if they had seen it now for the first time.

      “Oh, I don't think so,” said Mrs. Frost, in a sort of flattered coo.

      “Oh, don't have it cut off!” pleaded a young girl, coming up and taking the beautiful mane, hanging loose after the bath, into her hand. Mrs. Frost put her arm round the girl's waist, and pulled her down against her shoulder. Upon reflection she also kissed her.

      Through a superstition, handed down from mother to daughter, that it is uncivil and even unkind not to keep saying something, they went on talking vapidities, where the same number of men, equally vacuous, would have remained silent; and some of them complained that the nervous strain of conversation took away all the good their bath had done them. Miss Gleason, who did not bathe, was also not a talker. She kept a bright-eyed reticence, but was apt to break out in rather enigmatical flashes, which resolved the matter in hand into an abstraction, and left the others with the feeling that she was a person of advanced ideas, but that, while rejecting historical Christianity, she believed in a God of Love. This Deity was said, upon closer analysis, to have proved to be a God of Sentiment, and Miss Gleason was herself a hero-worshiper, or, more strictly speaking, a heroine-worshiper. At present Dr. Breen was her cult, and she was apt to lie in wait for her idol, to beam upon it with her suggestive eyes, and evidently to expect it to say or do something remarkable, but not to suffer anything like disillusion or disappointment in any event. She would sometimes offer it suddenly a muddled depth of sympathy in such phrases as, “Too bad!” or, “I don't see how you keep-up?” and darkly insinuate that she appreciated all that Grace was doing. She seemed to rejoice in keeping herself at a respectful distance, to which she breathlessly retired, as she did now, after waylaying her at the top of the stairs, and confidentially darting at her the words, “I'm so glad you don't like scandal!”

      III.

      After dinner the ladies tried to get a nap, but such of them as re-appeared on the piazza later agreed that it was perfectly useless. They tested every corner for a breeze, but the wind had fallen dead, and the vast sweep of sea seemed to smoulder under the sun. “This is what Mr. Barlow calls having it cooler,” said Mrs. Alger.

      “There СКАЧАТЬ