"And he is by far the most popular person in the city," my step-mother
broke forth again, sinking into a seat near the window and folding her
arms I looked up, but did not close my book.
"Who?" I asked indifferently.
"Dr. Campbell, to be sure," she answered a little snappishly, piqued
that I had not paid more attention to her favorite subject. Still
unwilling to drop the topic without having done it fuller justice, she
went on, half in soliloquy.
"He is not married either, and has the best practice here; besides
being courted by everybody who is anything. I am confident that the
Hunters, and those people, call him in for mere trifles, just to
cultivate his friendship. I know that Laura Hunter is fairly wild
about him--and she is a chronic dyspeptic, luckily," my step-mother
added with a malicious chuckle.
"Poor girl!" I exclaimed with well feigned sympathy, "I should think
she would not care to see any one she liked under such trying
circumstances."
"Neither does she--_except Dr Campbell_--she digests him so well that
her family would like to see her live upon him altogether."
I began to see that I was serving as a target for my step-mother's
ridicule of something which wounded her jealous tendencies, she knew
that I could make no retort for or against the absent ones at whom
these sly missiles were being aimed. I knew nothing of the
circumstances so broadly treated by her, and I therefore kept silent,
and applied myself to my book with renewed interest, and left my
step-mother mistress of the field--there was no glory in the conquest,
to speak of.
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