tty
fast, and looking straight before him, so that people got out of the way
of bowing to him as he passed on the road. There was some talk about his
not being so long-sighted as other folks, but his old patients laughed
and looked knowing when this was spoken of.

The Doctor knew a good many things besides how to drop tinctures
and shake out powders. Thus, he knew a horse, and, what is harder to
understand, a horse-dealer, and was a match for him. He knew what a
nervous woman is, and how to manage her. He could tell at a glance when
she is in that condition of unstable equilibrium in which a rough word
is like a blow to her, and the touch of unmagnetized fingers reverses
all her nervous currents. It is not everybody that enters into the soul
of Mozart's or Beethoven's harmonies; and there are vital symphonies in
B flat, and other low, sad keys, which a doctor may know as little of as
a hurdy-gurdy player of the essence of those divine musical mysteries.
The Doctor knew the difference between what men say and what they mean
as well as most people. When he was listening to common talk, he was in
the habit of looking over his spectacles; if he lifted his head so as
to look through them at the person talking, he was busier with that
person's thoughts than with his words.

Jefferson Buck was not bold enough to confront the Doctor with Miss
Susy's question, for he did not look as if he were in the mood to answer
queries put by curious young people. His eyes were fixed steadily on the
dark girl, every movement of whom he seemed to follow.

She was, indeed, an apparition of wild beauty, so unlike the girls about
her that it seemed nothing more than natural, that, when she moved, the
groups should part to let her pass through them, and that she should
carry the centre of all looks and thoughts with her. She was dressed to
please her own fancy, evidently, with small regard to the modes declared
correct by the Rockland milliners and mantua-makers. Her heavy black
hair lay in a braided coil, with a long gold pin shat through it like a
javelin. Round her neck was a golden torque, a round, cord-like chain,
such as the Gaols used to wear; the "Dying Gladiator" has it. Her
dress was a grayish watered silk; her collar was pinned with a flashing
diamond brooch, the stones looking as fresh as morning dew-drops, but
the silver setting of the past generation; her arms were bare, round,
but slender rather than large, in keeping with her l