to a dead
collie, and had put in the bag in some curious fashion and there
remained.

He prepared the bag a little nervously, while Max ate. He felt that
modern methods and the best usage might not have approved of the bag. On
his way out he paused at the dining-room door.

"Are you going to the hospital?"

"Operating at four--wish you could come in."

"I'm afraid not, Max. I've promised Sidney Page to speak about her to
you. She wants to enter the training-school."

"Too young," said Max briefly. "Why, she can't be over sixteen."

"She's eighteen."

"Well, even eighteen. Do you think any girl of that age is responsible
enough to have life and death put in her hands? Besides, although I
haven't noticed her lately, she used to be a pretty little thing. There
is no use filling up the wards with a lot of ornaments; it keeps the
internes all stewed up."

"Since when," asked Dr. Ed mildly, "have you found good looks in a girl
a handicap?"

In the end they compromised. Max would see Sidney at his office. It
would be better than having her run across the Street--would put things
on the right footing. For, if he did have her admitted, she would have
to learn at once that he was no longer "Dr. Max"; that, as a matter of
fact, he was now staff, and entitled to much dignity, to speech without
contradiction or argument, to clean towels, and a deferential interne at
his elbow.

Having given his promise, Max promptly forgot about it. The Street did
not interest him. Christine and Sidney had been children when he went to
Vienna, and since his return he had hardly noticed them. Society, always
kind to single men of good appearance and easy good manners, had taken
him up. He wore dinner or evening clothes five nights out of seven, and
was supposed by his conservative old neighbors to be going the pace. The
rumor had been fed by Mrs. Rosenfeld, who, starting out for her day's
washing at six o'clock one morning, had found Dr. Max's car, lamps
lighted, and engine going, drawn up before the house door, with its
owner asleep at the wheel. The story traveled the length of the Street
that day.

"Him," said Mrs. Rosenfeld, who was occasionally flowery, "sittin' up
as straight as this washboard, and his silk hat shinin' in the sun; but
exceptin' the car, which was workin' hard and gettin' nowhere, the whole
outfit in the arms of Morpheus."

Mrs. Lorenz, whose day it was to have Mrs. Rosenfeld, and who was
unfamiliar with mytholo