Something like a growl came from the doctor as he struck open the screen-door. “‘Limb!’ I’ll bet ten dollars she’s an angel in a cedar-tree at a church fair compared with some better-born young ones I know of who are only fit to live when they’ve got the scarlet-fever and who ought to be in the reformatory long ago. And as for Shirley Dandridge, it’s my opinion she and her mother and a few others like her have got about the only drops of the milk of human kindness in this whole abandoned community!” “Dreadful man!” said Mrs. Gifford, sotto voce, as the door banged viciously. “To think of his [Pg 131]being born a Southall! Sometimes I can’t believe it!” Mrs. Mason shook her head and smiled. “Ah, but that isn’t the real Doctor Southall,” she said. “That’s only his shell.” “I’ve heard that he has another side,” responded the other with guarded grimness, “but if he has, I wish he’d manage to show it sometimes.” Mrs. Mason took off her glasses and wiped them carefully. “I saw it when my husband died,” she said softly. “That was before you came. They were old friends, you know. He was sick almost a year, and the doctor used to carry him out here on the porch every day in his arms, like a child. And then, when the typhus came that summer among the negroes, he quarantined himself with them—the only white man there—and treated and nursed them and buried the dead with his own hands, till it was stamped out. That’s the real Doctor Southall.” The rockers vibrated in silence for a moment. Then Mrs. Gifford said: “I never knew before that he had anything to do with that duel. Was he one of Valiant’s seconds?” “Yes,” said Mrs. Mason; “and the major was the other. I was a little girl when it happened. I can barely remember it, but it made a big sensation.” “And over a love-affair!” exclaimed Mrs. Gifford [Pg 132]in the tone of one to whom romance was daily bread. “I suppose it was.”