At that moment Mr. Gowan might be said to be the doctor’s only audience. The rest of the company were engaged in whispering to each other, or speechlessly giving themselves over to suppressed and unholy glee. Judge Bowles was openly wiping his eyes and shaking in his chair. Dr. Michel looked around the circle with resentful surprise.
“You seem amused, gentlemen!” he said, with dignity; and then addressing himself to Mr. Gowan exclusively, as if that gentleman alone were worthy to be his listener, “Would you object to a woman as keeper, Mr. Gowan?”
A roar of laughter, not to be long suppressed, drowned his words. Mr. Gowan looked about the shaken circle, stared for a moment, then suddenly, as comprehension, like a breaking dawn, spread over his round face, he brought his hand down hard on his fat knee.
“Well, doctor,” he roared, in admiration too deep for laughter, “if you ain’t the dawgornest!”
The doctor’s wiry hair seemed to rise and spread as wings, his eyes snapped and twinkled, his mouth puckered. “Will some one embody this in the form of a motion?” he asked, gravely. The judge dried his eyes, and, with difficulty, rose to his feet.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I move that we build this monument with a base large enough for a suite of rooms inside; that we set this structure on the lot which our good doctor has chosen; that we ornament it with an illuminated clock at the top; and further, that--that this female keeper be appointed.”
The doctor, with his hands on his hips, his body thrown far back, looked with the eye of a conqueror over the assembly. “Those in favor of the motion will please say Aye; those opposed No. It seems to be carried! it is carried,” he recited in one rapid breath.
And this warm approval of their butcher was in the end echoed as cordially by the most pious citizens of Leonard. After the first shock of their surprise was over, natural misgivings were lost in enjoyment of the grim humor of this very practical jest of their good doctor’s, that visitors now actually stop over a train to see. Many a village has its park, and many a one its illuminated clock; it was left for Leonard to have in its park a grave kept like a gorgeous flower-bed, and at the grave’s head a towering monument that is at once a tombstone, an illuminated clock and a residence.