asked him a question, but he continued his delicate exploration raptly, as though he had not heard, as though she had not even spoken; inserting a small electric bulb, which he first sterilized, into Bayard’s mouth and snapping its ruby glow on and off withinhis cheek. Then he removed it and sterilized it again and returned it to the cabinet.
“Well?” Miss Jenny said impatiently. The doctor shut the cabinet deliberately and dried his hands and came and stood over them, and with his thumbs hooked in his jacket pockets he became solemnly and unctuously technical, rolling the harsh words from his tongue with an epicurean deliberation.
“It should be taken out at once,” he finished. “It doesn’t pain him now, and that is the reason I advise an immediate operation.”
“You mean, it might develop into cancer?” Miss Jenny asked.
“No question about it at all. Course of time. Neglect it, and I can promise you nothing; have it out now, and he need never worry about it.” He looked at Bayard again with lingering and chill contemplation. “It will be very simple. I will remove it as easily as that.” And he made a short gesture with his hand.
“What’s that?” Bayard demanded.
“I say, I can remove that growth so easily you won’t know it, Colonel Sartoris.”
“I’ll be damned if you do!” Bayard rose with one of his characteristic plunging movements.
“Sit down, Bayard,” Miss Jenny ordered. “Nobody’s going to cut on you without your knowing it. Should it be done right away?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am. I wouldn’t have that thing on my face overnight. Otherwise, it is only fair to warn you that I cannot assume responsibility for it...I could remove it in two minutes,” he added, looking at Bayard’s face again with cold speculation. Then he half turned his head and stopped in a listening attitude, and beyond the thin walls a voice in the other room boomed in rich rolling waves.
“Mawnin’, sister,” it said. “Didn’t I hear BayardSartoris cussin’ in here?” The doctor and Miss Jenny held their arrested attitudes, then the door surged open and the fattest man in Yocona county filled it. He wore a shiny alpaca coat over waistcoat and trousers of baggy impressed black broadcloth; above a plaited shirt the fatty rolls of his neck practically hid his low collar and a black string tie. His Roman senator’s head was covered with a vigorous curling of silvery hair. What the devil’s the matter with you?” he boomed, then: he sidled into the room, filling it completely, dwarfing its occupants and its furnishings.
This was Doctor Lucius Quintus Peabody, eighty-seven year? old and weighing three hundred and ten pounds and possessing a digestive tract like that of a horse. He had practiced medicine in Yocona county when a doctor’s equipment consisted of a saw and a gallon of whisky and a satchel of calomel; he had been John Sartoris’ regimental surgeon, and up to the day of the automobile he would start out at any hour of the twenty-four in any weather and for any distance, over practically impassable roads in a lopsided buckboard to visit anyone, white or black, who sent for him; accepting for fee usually a meal of corn pone and coffee or perhaps a small measure of corn or fruit, or a few flower bulbs or graftings. When he was young and hasty he had kept a daybook, kept it meticulously until these hypothetical assets totaled $10,000.00. But that was forty years ago, and since then he hadn’t bothered with a record at all; and now from time to time a countryman enters his shabby office and discharges an obligation, commemorating sometimes the payor’s entry into the world, incurred by his father or grandfather an4 which Dr. Peabody himself had long since forgotten about. Everyone in the county knew him, and it wassaid that he could spend the balance of his days driving about the county in the backboard he still used, with never a thought for board and lodging and without the expenditure of a penny for either. He filled the room with his bluff and homely humanity, and as he crossed the floor .and patted Miss Jenny’s back with one flail-like hand the whole building trembled to his tread.
“Mawnin’, Jenny,” he said. “Havin’ Bayard measured for insurance?”
“This damn butcher wants to cut on me,” Bayard said querulously. “You come on and make ‘em let me alone, Loosh.”
“Ten A.M.’s mighty early in the day to start car-vin’ white folks,”Dr. Peabody boomed. “Nigger’s different. Chop up a nigger any time after midnight What’s the matter with him, son?” he asked of Dr. Alford.
‘1 don’t believe it’s anything but a wart,” Miss Jenny said, “but I’m tired of looking at it.”
“It’s no wart,”Dr. Alford corrected stiffly. He recapitulated his diagnosis in technical terms while Dr. Peabody enveloped them all in the, rubicund benevolence of his presence.
“Sounds pretty bad, don’t it?” he agreed, and he shook the floor again and pushed Bayard firmly into the chair again with one huge hand, and with the other he dragged his face up to the light. Then he dug a pair of iron- bowed spectacles from the side pocket of his coat and examined Bayard’s wen through them. “Think it ought to come off, do you?”
“I do,”Dr. Alford answered coldly. “I think it is imperative that it be removed. Unnecessary there. Cancer.”
“Folks got along with cancer a long time beforethey invented knives,”Dr. Peabody said drily. “Hold still, Bayard.”
And people like you are one of the reasons, was on the tip of the younger man’s tongue. But he forbore and said instead: “I can remove that growth in two minutes, Colonel Sartoris.”
“Damned if you do,” Bayard rejoined violently, trying to rise. “Get away, Loosh.”
“Sit still,”Dr. Peabody said equably, holding him down while he probed at the wen. “Does it hurt any?”
“No. I never said it did. And I’ll be damned—”
“You’ll probably be damned anyway,”Dr. Peabody told him. “You’d be about as well off dead, anyhow. I don’t know anybody that gets less fun out of living than you seem to.”
“You told the truth for once,” Miss Jenny agreed. “He’s the oldest person I ever knew in my life.”
“And so,”Dr. Peabody continued blandly, “I wouldn’t.worry about it. Let it stay there. Nobody cares what your face looks like.
“If Dr. Peabody is permitted to interfere with impunity—” the younger man began.
