"Why bless me, Sally, I haven't any right to decide what doctor you're to have when you're sick; I'll never say another word about it; only you needn't expect me ever to speak to that Eben Williams; I never expected to see him under my roof," she dropped the subject and never alluded to it again.
Her first impulse, as we said, when she saw the obnoxious doctor coming towards her now, was to fly; her second one of anger with herself for the first.
"I'm on my own ground," she thought with some of the old Squire's honest pride stirring her veins, "I think I will not run away from the popinjay."
It was hard to know just how such a dislike to Dr. Eben Williams had grown up in Hetty's friendly heart. He had come some four years before to practise medicine at Lonway Four Corners. His bright and cordial face, his social manner, his superior education, readiness, and resource, had quickly won away many patients from old Dr. Tuthill, who still drove about the country as he had driven for half a century, with a ponderous black leather case full of calomel and jalap swung under his sulky. A few old families, the Gunns among the number, adhered faithfully to the old doctor, and became bitter partisans against the new one.
"Let him stick to the Corners: if they like him there, they're welcome to him. He needn't be trying to get all Welbury besides," they said angrily. "Welbury's done very well for a doctor, these good many years: since before Eben Williams was born, for that matter;" and words ran high in the warfare. Squire Gunn was one of the most violent of Dr. Williams's opposers; and when, a few days before his death, old Dr. Tuthill had timidly suggested that it might be well to have a consultation, the Squire broke out with:
"Not that damned Eben Williams then. I won't have that damned rascal set foot in this house. You're a fool, Tuthill, to let that young upstart get all your practice as he's a doing."
The old man smiled sadly. He did not in the least share his friends' hostility to the handsome, young, and energetic physician who was so plainly soon to be his successor in the county.
"Ah, Squire!" he said, "you forget how old you and I are. It is nearly my time to pass on, and make room for a younger man. Eben's a good doctor. I'd rather he'd have the circuit here than anybody I know."