Sweethearts

It is hard for the general practitioner who sits
among his patients both morning and evening, and sees
them in their homes between, to steal time for one
little daily breath of cleanly air. To win it he
must slip early from his bed and walk out between
shuttered shops when it is chill but very clear, and
all things are sharply outlined, as in a frost. It
is an hour that has a charm of its own, when, but for
a postman or a milkman, one has the pavement to
oneself, and even the most common thing takes an
ever-recurring freshness, as though causeway, and
lamp, and signboard had all wakened to the new day.
Then even an inland city may seem beautiful, and bear
virtue in its smoke-tainted air.

But it was by the sea that I lived, in a town
that was unlovely enough were it not for its glorious
neighbour. And who cares for the town when one can
sit on the bench at the headland, and look out over
the huge, blue bay, and the yellow scimitar that
curves before it. I loved it when its
great face was freckled with the fishing boats, and I
loved it when the big ships went past, far out, a
little hillock of white and no hull, with topsails
curved like a bodice, so stately and demure. But
most of all I loved it when no trace of man marred
the majesty of Nature, and when the sun-bursts
slanted down on it from between the drifting
rainclouds. Then I have seen the further edge draped
in the gauze of the driving rain, with its thin grey
shading under the slow clouds, while my headland was
golden, and the sun gleamed upon the breakers and
struck deep through the green waves beyond, showing
up the purple patches where the beds of seaweed are
lying. Such a morning as that, with the wind in his
hair, and the spray on his lips, and the cry of the
eddying gulls in his ear, may send a man back braced
afresh to the reek of a sick-room, and the dead, drab
weariness of practice.

It was on such another day that I first saw my
old man. He came to my bench just as I was leaving
it. My eye must have picked him out even in a
crowded street, for he was a man of large frame and
fine presence, with something of distinction in the
set of his lip and the poise of his head. He limped
up the winding path leaning heavily upon his stick,
as though those great shoulders had become too much
at last for the failing limbs that bore them. As he
approached, my eyes caught Nature's danger
signal, that faint bluish tinge in nose and lip which
tells of a labouring heart.

"The brae is a little trying, sir," said I.
"Speaking as a physician, I should say that you
would do well to rest here before you go further."

He inclined his head in a stately, old-world