himself failure
and loathed the Street with a deadly loathing.

So now Max brought his handsome self down the staircase and paused at
the office door.

"At it, already," he said. "Or have you been to bed?"

"It's after nine," protested Ed mildly. "If I don't start early, I never
get through."

Max yawned.

"Better come with me," he said. "If things go on as they've been doing,
I'll have to have an assistant. I'd rather have you than anybody, of
course." He put his lithe surgeon's hand on his brother's shoulder.
"Where would I be if it hadn't been for you? All the fellows know what
you've done."

In spite of himself, Ed winced. It was one thing to work hard that there
might be one success instead of two half successes. It was a different
thing to advertise one's mediocrity to the world. His sphere of the
Street and the neighborhood was his own. To give it all up and become
his younger brother's assistant--even if it meant, as it would, better
hours and more money--would be to submerge his identity. He could not
bring himself to it.

"I guess I'll stay where I am," he said. "They know me around here, and
I know them. By the way, will you leave this envelope at Mrs. McKee's?
Maggie Rosenfeld is ironing there to-day. It's for her."

Max took the envelope absently.

"You'll go on here to the end of your days, working for a pittance,"
he objected. "Inside of ten years there'll be no general practitioners;
then where will you be?"

"I'll manage somehow," said his brother placidly. "I guess there will
always be a few that can pay my prices better than what you specialists
ask."

Max laughed with genuine amusement.

"I dare say, if this is the way you let them pay your prices."

He held out the envelope, and the older man colored.

Very proud of Dr. Max was his brother, unselfishly proud, of his skill,
of his handsome person, of his easy good manners; very humble, too, of
his own knowledge and experience. If he ever suspected any lack of
finer fiber in Max, he put the thought away. Probably he was too rigid
himself. Max was young, a hard worker. He had a right to play hard.

He prepared his black bag for the day's calls--stethoscope, thermometer,
eye-cup, bandages, case of small vials, a lump of absorbent cotton in
a not over-fresh towel; in the bottom, a heterogeneous collection of
instruments, a roll of adhesive plaster, a bottle or two of sugar-milk
tablets for the children, a dog collar that had belonged