"I don't know where they are, that's it. Doctor took Miss Charlotte and
Ranny off after lunch in his machine, and Mis' Peyton and Lucy have gone
to town with your mother. Doctor Andy wouldn't like it if his friends
came without anybody to meet 'em."
Jeff tore open the dispatch. "The first two words will tell me, I
suppose," he said. "Hello--yes, you're right! They'll be here on the
five-ten. That's"--he pulled out his watch--"why, there's barely time to
get to the station now! This must have been delayed. You say you don't
know where anybody is?"
"Not a soul. Doctor usually leaves word, but he didn't this time."
"I'll telephone the hospital," and Jeff hurried to Doctor Churchill's
desk. In a minute he had learned that the doctor had come and gone for
the last time that day. He looked at Mrs. Fields.
"You'll have to go, Mr. Jeff," said she. "I know Doctor Andy's ways.
He'd as soon let company go without their dinners as not be on hand when
their train came in. He wasn't expecting the Lees till to-morrow."
"Of course," said Jeff, "I'll go, since there's nobody else. How am I to
know 'em? Young man and sick girl? All right, that's easy," and he was
off to catch a car at the corner.
As he rode into town, however, he was rebelling against the situation.
"This guest business is being overdone," he observed to himself. "These
people are probably some more off the Peyton piece of cloth. An invalid
girl lying round on couches for Fiddle to wait on--another Lucy,
probably, only worse, because she's ill. Well, I'm not going to be any
more cordial than the law calls for. I'll have to bring 'em out in a
carriage, I suppose. She'll be too limp for the trolley."
He reached the station barely in time to engage a carriage before the
train came in. He took up his position inside the gates through which
all passengers must pass from the train-shed into the great station.
"Looking for somebody?" asked a voice at his elbow.
He glanced quickly down at one of his old schoolmates, Carolyn Houghton.
"Yes, guests of the Churchills," he answered, his gaze instantly
returning to the throng pouring toward him from the train. "Help me,
will you? I don't know them from Adam. It's a man and his invalid
sister, old friends of Andy's."
"There they are," said Carolyn, promptly, indicating an approaching
pair.
Jeff laughed. "The sister isn't quite so antique as that," he objected,
as a little woman of fifty wavered past on the arm of a stout gentleman.
"You said 'old' friends," retorted Carolyn. "Look, Jeff, isn't that she?
The sister's being wheeled in a chair by a porter, the brother's walking
beside her. They _look_ like Doctor Churchill's friends, Jeff."
"Think you can tell Andy's friends by their uniform?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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