Sweetapple Cove

Sweetapple Cove

The Project Gutenberg EBook of Sweetapple Cove, by George van
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Title: Sweetapple Cove
Author: George van Schaick
Release Date: September 8, 2004 [EBook #13396]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SWEETAPPLE COVE
BY GEORGE VAN SCHAIGK
1914

CHAPTER I
From John Grant's Diary
Have I shown wisdom or made an arrant, egregious fool of myself?
This, I suppose, is a question every man puts to himself after taking a
sudden decision upon which a great deal depends.
I have shaken the dust of the great city by the Hudson and forsaken its
rich laboratories, its vast hospitals, the earnest workers who were
beginning to show some slight interest in me. It was done not after
mature consideration but owing to the whim of a moment, to a sudden
desire to change the trend of things I felt I could no longer contend
with.
Now I live in a little house, among people who speak with an accent
that has become unfamiliar to the great outside world. They have given
up their two best rooms to me, at a rental so small that I am somewhat
ashamed to tender it, at the end of every week. I also obtain the
constant care and the pleasant smiles of a good old housewife who
appears to take a certain amount of pride in her lodger. As far as I know
I am the only boarder in Sweetapple Cove, as well as the only doctor.
For a day or two after my arrival I accompanied the local parson, Mr.
Barnett, on visits to people he considered to be in need of my
ministrations. Now they are coming in droves, and many scattered
dwellers on the bleak coast have heard of me. Little fishing-smacks
meeting others from farther outports have spread the amazing news that
there is a doctor at the Cove.
With other pomps and vanities I have given up white shirts and collars,
and my recent purchases include oilskins and long boots. This is
fashionable apparel here, and my wearing them appears to impart
confidence in my ability.
My only reason for writing this is that the Barnetts go to bed early.
Doubtless I may also acquire the habit, in good time. Moreover, there is
always a danger of disturbing some important sermon-writing. In
common decency I can't bother these delightful people every evening,

although they have begged me to consider their home as my own. Mrs.
Barnett is a most charming woman, and never in my life have I known
anything like the welcome she impulsively extended, but she works
hard and I cannot intrude too much. Hence the hours after nine are
exceedingly long, when it chances that there are no sick people to look
after. At first, of course, I just mooned around, and called myself all
sorts of names, honestly considering myself the most stupendous fool
ever permitted to exist in freedom from restraint. I plunged into books
and devoured the medical weeklies which the irregular mails of the
place brought me, yet this did not entirely suffice, and now I have
begun to write. It may help the time to pass away, and prevent the
attacks of mold and rust. Later on, if things do not shape themselves
according to my hopes, these dangers will be of little import. These
sheets may then mildew with the dampness of this land, or fly away to
sea with the shrewd breezes that sweep over our coast, for all I shall
care. At any rate they will have served their purpose.
Of course I am trying to swallow my medicine like a little man. If there
is a being I despise it is the fellow who whimpers. There is little that is
admirable in professional pugilism, saving the smile often seen on a
fighter's face after he has just received a particularly hard and crushing
blow. Indeed, that smile is the bruiser's apology for his life.
Lest it be inferred that I have been fighting, I hasten to declare that it
was a rather one-sided contest in which I was defeated, lock, stock and
barrel, by a mere slip of a girl towards whom I had only lifted up my
hands in supplication.
"We are both very young, John," she explained to me, with an
exasperating, if unconscious, imitation of the doctors she had observed
as they announced very disagreeable things