cious
reader, the doctor had forbidden all thought of study for a year, even
had there been a school near enough for him to attend, where John would
have been willing to send him. He ought to be where the air was pure and
the surroundings cheerful. John would have preferred to put up with the
discomfort of his present quarters and lay by the addition to his salary
towards the more speedy realization of his day-dream, but John Randolph
had never found much time to think of himself; there were always so many
other people in the world to be attended to.

"Dick, my boy," he said cheerily one evening, after they had finished
what he pronounced a sumptuous repast, "I have a presentiment that this
month will witness a turning point in our career. I believe you and I
are going to become suburbanites."

The boy's sad eyes grew wide with wonder.

"What do you mean, John?"

"Well you see, Dick True, it is this way. As soon as I get my
degree--earn the right to put M.D. after my name, you know,--I am going
to take two rubber bags, fill one with sunshine and one with pure air,
full of the scent of rose leaves and clover and strawberries--ah, Dick,
you'd like to smell that, wouldn't you?--and carry one in each pocket;
then, when my patients come to me for advice, the first dose I shall
give them will be out of my rubber bags, and in six cases out of ten I
believe they'll get better without any drug at all. You see, Dick True,
the trouble is, our Father has given us a whole world full of air and
sunlight to be happy in, and we poison the air with smoke and shut
ourselves away from the sunshine in boxes of brick and mortar, only
letting a stray beam come in occasionally through slits in the walls
which we call windows. It's no wonder we are such poor, miserable
concerns. You can't fancy an Indian suffering from nervous prostration,
can you, Dick? and it doesn't strike you as probable that Robinson
Crusoe had any predisposition to lung trouble? So you see, Dick True, as
it is a poor doctor who is afraid of his own medicine, I am going to
prescribe it first of all for ourselves, and we will go where
unadulterated oxygen may be had for the smelling, and we can draw in
sunshine with every breath."

The pale face brightened.

"Oh, that will be lovely! I do get so tired of these old streets. But
John,--"

"Well, Dick?"

"Why do you keep calling me Dick True all the time?"

John laughed. "Just to remind you that you must be a true