"Think of it," he would ejaculate; "so beautiful a river as ours and the Yankees north of it! It will be different in the next world. Then Virginia shall be on one bank and Kentucky on the other. And Yankee Indiana--" But why speak here of the place to which Indiana is duly consigned for eternity.
At any rate, with a grateful and happy heart I accepted the invitation so generously given me by Doctor Longstreet and, in due time, promptly arrived ready for business.
I had been home less than two weeks. A great deal of this time, it is true, I had given to getting settled in the office of Doctor Longstreet. I had dined once with Nance, however, and had taken part in a few scrappy conversations. There was a slight reservedness upon her part toward me which seemed to be largely because of the almost continuous absence of several years. This I believed would shortly wear off.
One late afternoon we were strolling about her yard and talking of many things: of herself when she would permit it, of Jean François, of Monsieur l'Abbé Picot, and the happenings of Oldmeadow. Finally we leaned against the fence and gazed across the street at the silent old house of the pillars. Its owner was away and the place looked lonely.
"Well, I'm quite grown up now," smiled Nance jestingly, "and still I have not come into my possessions.... I wonder when, Charles?" she asked, much in her old-time manner.
"When this blessed old village that we have owned for so very long," I replied, with a meaning glance toward my shining new instrument case and pill-bag, which I always carried with me, "increases my collection of patients."
Like untried youth I was unconscious of limitations. That, if Nance wanted it, I could not make money enough to buy the place, never occurred to my dreaming brain.
"It would be really wicked, I suppose, to wish they would go on and get sick," she said, "but I do think they might have you in now and then for a little friendly, advisory chat about their rheumatism, rose-bushes, and the like, that they might learn how interesting you are."
Since I have had some years in which to think of this episode, I feel that there must have been a trifle of irony in her remark. At the time it appeared serious enough.