"Mrs. Johnson she looked younger than her own daughter yet," Mrs.
Wackernagel related, with animation, innocent of any suspicion that the
teacher might not find the subject of Mrs. Johnson as absorbing as she
found it.

"There is nothing like good health as a preserver of youth," responded
Fairchilds.

"HOtel-keepin' didn't pay till we got the license," Mr. Wackernagel
chatted confidentially to the stranger. "Mom, to be sure, she didn't
favor my havin' a bar, because she belonged to meetin'. But I seen I
couldn't make nothin' if I didn't. It was never no temptation to me--I
was always among the whisky and I never got tight oncet. And it ain't
the hard work farmin' was. I had to give up followin' farmin'. I got it
so in my leg. Why, sometimes I can't hardly walk no more."

"And can't your doctor cure you?" Fairchilds asked, with a curious
glance at the unkempt little man across the table.

"Och, yes, he's helped me a heap a'ready. Him he's as good a doctor as
any they're got in Lancaster even!" was the loyal response. "Here a
couple months back, a lady over in East Donegal Township she had wrote
him a letter over here, how the five different kinds of doses where he
give her daughter done her so much good, and she was that grateful, she
sayed she just felt indebted fur a letter to him! Ain't, Doc? She sayed
now her daughter's engaged to be married and her mind's more
settled--and to be sure, that made somepin too. Yes, she sayed her
gettin' engaged done her near as much good as the five different kind
of doses done her."

"Are you an Allopath?" Fairchilds asked the doctor.

"I'm a Eclectic," he responded glibly. "And do you know, Teacher, I'd
been practisin' that there style of medicine fur near twelve years
before I knowed it was just to say the Eclectic School, you understand."

"Like Moliere's prose-writer!" remarked the teacher, then smiled at
himself for making such an allusion in such a place.

"Won't you have some more sliced radishes, Teacher?" urged the hostess.
"I made a-plenty."

"No, I thank you," Fairchilds replied, with his little air of courtesy
that so impressed the whole family. "I can't eat radishes in the
evening with impunity."

"But these is with WINEGAR," Mrs. Wackernagel corrected him.

Before Mr. Fairchilds could explain, Mr. Wackernagel broke in,
confirming the doctor's proud claim.

"Yes, Doc he's a Eclectic," he repeated, evidently feeling that the
fact reflected credit on the ho