As he
went he tried to think out what it was that had come between him and the
boy whom he had known so intimately for so many years. Stopping at the
post office, he found a letter in his care addressed to "Rev. Daniel H.
Matthews." In his abstraction he was about to hand the letter in at the
window with the explanation that he knew no such person, when a voice at
his elbow said: "Is Brother Matthews fully rested from his tiresome
journey, Doctor?"
The Doctor's abstraction vanished instantly, he jammed that letter into
his pocket and faced the speaker.
"Yes," he growled, "I think Brother Matthews is fully rested. As he is
a grown man of unusual strength, and in perfect health of body at least,
and the tiresome journey was a trip of only four hours, in a comfortable
railway coach, I think I may say that he is fully recovered."
Then the Doctor slipped away. But he had discovered what it was that had
come between the boy and himself. The _man_, Dan Matthews, was no longer
the Doctor's boy. He was "Reverend," "Brother," the _preacher_. All the
morning it had been making itself felt, that something that sets
preachers apart. The Doctor wondered how his young hill-bred giant would
stand being coddled and petted and loved by the wives and mothers of men
who, for their daily bread, met the world bare-handed, and whose
hardships were accepted by them and by these same mothers and wives as a
matter of course.
By this time the Doctor had reached his office, and the sight of the
familiar old rooms that had been the scene of so many revelations of real
tragedies and genuine hardships, known only to the sufferer and to him
professionally, forced him to continue his thought.
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