“Yes, the chap that has travelled and come home so changed. They do say
he’s actually taken to visiting all the rheumatic old women in town,
applying sticking plasters to their backs and administering _squills_ to
their children, all free gratis. Don’t ask a red—does it for charity’s
sake: but I know he expects to get his pay out of Alice’s purse, as he
does it to please her and nothing else. He ought to be rewarded for all
his philanthropy with a rich wife, that’s a fact. It’s too bad to have
him so disappointed, and if he comes out to the funeral I believe I’ll
tell him as a friend that my advice is, not to marry for money—it won’t
pay,” and from beneath the slouched hat drawn so closely over the
comical face, the keen gray eyes looked curiously.
Poor doctor! How he fidgeted, moving so often that his tormenter
demurely asked him if he were sitting on a _thistle_!
“Does Miss Johnson remain here?” the doctor asked at last, and Mr.
Liston replied by telling what he knew of the arrangements.
At the mention of Worthington the doctor, looked up quickly. Whom had he
known by that name, or where had he heard it before? “Mrs. Worthington,
Mrs. Worthington,” he repeated, unpleasant memories of something, he
knew not what, rising to his mind. “Is she living in this vicinity?”
“In Kentucky. It’s a widow and her daughter,” Mr. Liston answered,
wisely resolving to say nothing of a young man, lest the doctor should
feel anxious.
“A widow and her daughter! I must be mistaken in thinking I ever knew
any one by that name, though it seems familiar,” said the doctor, and as
by this time he had heard all he wished to hear, he arose, and bidding
Mr. Liston good morning walked away in no enviable frame of mind.
“I didn’t tell him a lie. He will be disappointed when he finds just how
much she is worth, and my advice to him, or any other man, is not to
marry for money,” Mr. Liston chucklingly soliloquized as he watched the
crestfallen doctor disappearing from view, muttering to himself, “The
wretch! to talk so to my face! I wish I’d knocked him down. Rheumatic
woman and squills, indeed! But it’s all true, every word, and that’s the
worst of it. I have turned fool just to get a pretty girl, or rather to
get her money. But I won’t stay here to be laughed at. I’ll go back this
very day. I am glad no one has seen me except that old rat, who never
guessed I was the chap he complimented so highly, the rascal!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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