submerging one as visibly as water. This warm-air
bath was, moreover, sweetened with the utmost breath of the pine
woods. Jerome, plunging into it, felt all at once a certain sense of
courage and relief, as if he had a bidding and a welcome from old
friends.

There are times when a quick conviction, from something like a
special favor or caress of the great motherhood of nature, which
makes us all as child to child, comes over one. "His pine-trees ain't
any different from other folks' pine-trees," flashed through Jerome's
mind.

Chapter IX

He went on straight round the house to the south-side door, whither
everybody went to consult the doctor. He knocked, and in a moment the
door opened, and a young girl with weak blue eyes, with a helpless
droop of the chin, and mouth half opened in a silly smile, looked out
at him. She was a girl whom Doctor Prescott had taken from the
almshouse to assist in the lighter household duties. She was
considered rather weak in her intellect, though she did her work well
enough when she had once learned how.

Jerome bent his head with a sudden stiff duck to this girl. "Is
Doctor Prescott at home?" he inquired.

"Yes, sir," replied the girl, with the same respectful courtesy and
ceremony with which she might have greeted the Squire or any town
magnate, instead of this poor little boy. Her mind was utterly
incapable of the faculties of selection and discrimination. She
applied one formula, unmodified, to all mankind.

"Can I see him a minute?" asked Jerome, gruffly.

"Yes, sir. Will you walk in?"

The girl, moving with a weak, shuffling toddle, like a child, led
Jerome through the length of the entry to a great room on the north
side of the house, which was the doctor's study and office. Two large
cupboards, whose doors were set with glass in diamond panes in the
upper panels, held his drugs and nostrums. Books, mostly ponderous
volumes in rusty leather, lined the rest of the wall space. When
Jerome entered the room the combined odor of those leather-bound
folios and the doctor's drugs smote his nostrils, as from a curious
brewing of theoretical and applied wisdom in one pot.

"Take a seat," said the girl, "and I will speak to the doctor." Then
she went out, with the vain, pleased simper of a child who has said
her lesson well.

Jerome sat down and looked about him. He had been in the room several
times before, but his awe of it preserved its first strangeness for
him.