and now
he stopped. "Aren't you feeling quite well, Miss Bessie?"

"Oh yes," she said, and she began to cry.

The doctor came forward and said, cheerily: "Let me see." He pulled a
chair up to hers, and took her wrist between his fingers. "If you were
at Mrs. Enderby's last night, you'll need another night to put you just
right. But you're pretty well as it is." He let her wrist softly go,
and said: "You mustn't distress yourself about your brother's case.
Of course, it's hard to have it happen now after he's held up so long;
longer than it has been before, I think, isn't it? But it's something
that it has been so long. The next time, let us hope, it will be longer
still."

The doctor made as if to rise. Bessie put her hand out to stay him.
"What is it makes him do it?"

"Ah, that's a great mystery," said the doctor. "I suppose you might say
the excitement."

"Yes!"

"But it seems to me very often, in such cases, as if it were to escape
the excitement. I think you're both keyed up pretty sharply by nature,
Miss Bessie," said the doctor, with the personal kindness he felt for
the girl, and the pity softening his scientific spirit.

"I know!" she answered. "We're alike. Why don't I take to drinking,
too?"

The doctor laughed at such a question from a young lady, but with an
inner seriousness in his laugh, as if, coming from a patient, it was
to be weighed. "Well, I suppose it isn't the habit of your sex, Miss
Bessie."

"Sometimes it is. Sometimes women get drunk, and then I think they
do less harm than if they did other things to get away from the
excitement." She longed to confide in him; the words were on her tongue;
she believed he could help her, tell her what to do; out of his stores
of knowledge and experience he must have some suggestion, some remedy;
he could advise her; he could stand her friend, so far. People told
their doctors all kinds of things, silly things. Why should she not tell
her doctor this?

It would have been easier if it had been an older man, who might have
had a daughter of her age. But he was in that period of the early
forties when a doctor sometimes has a matter-of-fact, disagreeable
wife whose idea stands between him and the spiritual intimacy of his
patients, so that it seems as if they were delivering their confidences
rather to her than to him. He was able, he was good, he was extremely
acute, he was even with the latest facts and theories; but as he sat
straight up in his