Richling felt an inward start. The Doctor interrupted his intended speech.
"Our short experience together, Richling, is the one great light place in my life; and to me, to-day, sere as I am, the sweet--the sweetest sound--on God's green earth"--the corners of his mouth quivered--"is the name of Alice. Take care of Mary, Richling; she's a priceless treasure. Don't leave the making and sustaining of the home sunshine all to her, any more than you'd like her to leave it all to you."
"I'll not, Doctor; I'll not." Richling pressed the Doctor's hand fervently; but the Doctor drew it away with a certain energy, and rose, saying:--
The day that Richling went back to his malarious home in Prieur street Dr. Sevier happened to meet him just beyond the hospital gate. Richling waved his hand. He looked weak and tremulous. "Homeward bound," he said, gayly.
The physician reached forward in his carriage and bade his driver stop. "Well, be careful of yourself; I'm coming to see you in a day or two."
Dr. Sevier was daily overtasked. His campaigns against the evils of our disordered flesh had even kept him from what his fellow-citizens thought was only his share of attention to public affairs.
"Why," he cried to a committee that came soliciting his coöperation, "here's one little unprofessional call that I've been trying every day for two weeks to make--and ought to have made--and must make; and I haven't got a step toward it yet. Oh, no, gentlemen!" He waved their request away.
He was very tired. The afternoon was growing late. He dismissed his jaded horse toward home, walked down to Canal street, and took that yellow Bayou-Road omnibus whose big blue star painted on its corpulent side showed that quadroons, etc., were allowed a share of its accommodation, and went rumbling and tumbling over the cobble-stones of the French quarter.
By and by he got out, walked a little way southward in the hot, luminous shade of low-roofed tenement cottages that closed their window-shutters noiselessly, in sensitive-plant fashion, at his slow, meditative approach, and slightly and as noiselessly reopened them behind him, showing a pair of wary eyes within. Presently he recognized just ahead of him, standing out on the sidewalk, the little house that had been described to him by Mary.