The Awakening of Helena Richie | Page 2

Lavendar looked at him over his spectacles. "Mrs. Frederick Richie?--though I understand she calls herself Mrs. Helena Richie. I don't like a young female to use her own name, William, even if she is a widow! Still, she may be a nice woman I suppose. Do you think a little boy would have a good home with her?"
"Well," the doctor demurred, "of course, we know very little about her. She has only been here six months. But I should think she was just the person to take him. She is mighty good-looking, isn't she?"
"Yes," Dr. Lavendar said, "she is. And other things being equal I prefer a good-looking woman. But I don't know that her looks are a guarantee that she can train up a child in the way he should go. Can't you think of anybody else?"
"I don't see why you don't like Mrs. Richie?" "I never said I didn't like her," protested Dr. Lavendar; "but she's a widow."
"Unless she murdered the late Richie, that's not against her."
"Widows don't always stay widows, Willy."
"I don't believe she's the marrying kind," William said. "I have a sort of feeling that the deceased Richie was not the kind of husband who receives the compliment of a successor--"
"Hold on; you're mixing things up! It's the bad husband and the good wife that get compliments of that kind."
William laughed as he was expected to, but he stuck to his opinion that Mrs. Richie had had enough of husbands. "And anyway, she's devoted to her brother--though he doesn't come to see her very often."
"There's another point," objected Dr. Lavendar; "what kind of a man is this Mr. Pryor? Danny growled at him once, which prejudiced me against him."
"I don't take to him much myself," William King confessed; "though I must say he seems a decent man enough. He doesn't cultivate acquaintances in Old Chester, but that only shows bad taste."
"She says he is not very well," Dr. Lavendar explained; "she says he likes to keep quiet when he comes down here."
"I don't see anything wrong with him."
"Hasn't taken any of your pills? Maybe he doesn't believe in doctors. I don't myself."
"Thank you," said William King.
"There's too much fuss anyway over our precious carcasses! And you fellows encourage it," Dr. Lavendar grumbled. Then he said he wished he knew more about Mrs. Richie. "I ask you for information and all you say is that she's good-looking, and her brother doesn't take your pills."
William laughed.
"She doesn't come to church very regularly, and she never stops afterwards to talk," Dr. Lavendar ruminated.
"Well, she lives 'way up there on the hill road--"
"Yes, she does live pretty far out of town," Dr. Lavendar admitted, "but that's not a reason for not being neighborly after church."
"She's shy," said William King, "that's all. Shyness isn't anything very wrong. And she's mighty pleasant when she does talk to you. I tell you Dr. Lavendar, pleasantness goes a good way in this world. I'd say it was better than goodness--only they are the same thing."
"No, they're not," said Dr. Lavendar.
"I grant she doesn't belong to the sewing society," William said grinning. "Martha says that some of the ladies say she doesn't show proper grief for her husband. She actually smiles sometimes! They say that if the Lord were to remove their beloved husbands, they would never smile again."
"William," said Dr. Lavendar chuckling, "I begin to like your widow."
"She's not my widow, thank you! But she's a nice woman, and she must be pretty lonely up there all by herself."
"Wish I had gone in to see her this afternoon," the old man said thoughtfully. "As you say she may be a suitable person to take this little boy. I wonder if she's going to stay in Old Chester?"
"Sam Wright says she has spoken to him of buying the house. That looks as if she meant to settle down. Did you know that Sam's Sam is casting sheep's eyes at her?"
"Why, she's old enough to be his mother!" said Dr. Lavendar.
"Oh, no. Sam's Sam is twenty-three, and one of my patients says that Mrs. Richie will never see forty-five again. Which leads me to conclude that she's about thirty."
"Of course she doesn't encourage him?" Dr. Lavendar said anxiously.
"She lets him come to see her, and she took him out once in that wicker-work vehicle she has--looks like a clothes-basket on wheels. And she provides the clothes to put into it. I'm told they're beautiful; but that no truly pious female would be willing to decorate poor flesh and blood with such finery. I'm told--"
"William! Is this the way I've brought you up? To pander to my besetting sin? Hold your tongue!" Dr. Lavendar rose chuckling, and stood in front of the fireplace, gathering the tails of his flowered cashmere dressing-gown under his arms. "But Willy I