The attorney stood at his window with a shadow on his face, and his small eyes a little contracted and snakelike, following the slim figure of the threadbare vicar and his golden-haired, dancing little comrade; and then he mounted a chair, and took down successively four of his japanned boxes; two of them, in yellow letters, bore respectively the label '_Brandon, No. 1_,' and '_No. 2_;' the other '_Wylder, No. 1_,' and '_No. 2_.'
He opened the 'Wylder' box first, and glanced through a neat little 'statement of title,' prepared for counsel when draughting the deed of settlement for the marriage which was never to take place.
'The limitations, let me see, is not there something that one might be safe in advancing a trifle upon--eh?--h'm--yes.'
And, with his lip in his finger and thumb, he conned over those remainders and reversions with a skilled and rapid eye.
Rachel Lake was glad to see the slender and slightly-stooped figure of the vicar standing that morning--his bright little boy by the hand--in the wicket of the tiny flower-garden of Redman's Farm. She went out quickly to greet him. The sick man likes the sound of his kind doctor's step on the stairs; and, be his skill much or little, trusts in him, and will even joke a little asthmatic joke, and smile a feeble hectic smile about his ailments, when he is present.
So they fell into discourse among the autumnal flowers and withered leaves; and, as the day was still and genial, they remained standing in the garden; and away went busy little 'Fairy,' smiling and chatting with Margery, to see the hens and chickens in the yard.
The physician, after a while, finds the leading features of most cases pretty much alike. He knows when inflammation may be expected and fever will supervene; he is not surprised if the patient's mind wanders a little at times; expects the period of prostration and the return of appetite; and has his measures and his palliatives ready for each successive phase of sickness and recovery. In like manner, too, the good and skilful parson comes by experience to know the signs and stages of the moral ailments and recoveries which some of them know how so tenderly and so wisely to care for. They, too, have ready--having often proved their consolatory efficacy--their febrifuges and their tonics, culled from that tree of life whose 'leaves are for the healing of the nations.'