t. First place, I'm going to make the
money--I'm investing in good safe farmlands. Do you understand why now?"

"Yes."

"Will you try and see if you can't think of me as something more than
just a dollar-chasing roughneck?"

"Oh, my dear, I haven't been just! I AM difficile. And I won't call on
the Dillons! And if Dr. Dillon is working for Westlake and McGanum, I
hate him!"

CHAPTER XV

THAT December she was in love with her husband.

She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a
country physician. The realities of the doctor's household were colored
by her pride.

Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through her confusion
of sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling over the inner door-panels;
the buzz of the electric bell. Kennicott muttering "Gol darn it," but
patiently creeping out of bed, remembering to draw the covers up to keep
her warm, feeling for slippers and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs.

From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy in the
pidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten the Old Country language
without learning the new:

"Hello, Barney, wass willst du?"

"Morgen, doctor. Die Frau ist ja awful sick. All night she been having
an awful pain in de belly."

"How long she been this way? Wie lang, eh?"

"I dunno, maybe two days."

"Why didn't you come for me yesterday, instead of waking me up out of a
sound sleep? Here it is two o'clock! So spat--warum, eh?"

"Nun aber, I know it, but she got soch a lot vorse last evening. I
t'ought maybe all de time it go avay, but it got a lot vorse."

"Any fever?"

"Vell ja, I t'ink she got fever."

"Which side is the pain on?"

"Huh?"

"Das Schmertz--die Weh--which side is it on? Here?"

"So. Right here it is."

"Any rigidity there?"

"Huh?"

"Is it rigid--stiff--I mean, does the belly feel hard to the fingers?"

"I dunno. She ain't said yet."

"What she been eating?"

"Vell, I t'ink about vot ve alwis eat, maybe corn beef and cabbage and
sausage, und so weiter. Doc, sie weint immer, all the time she holler
like hell. I vish you come."

"Well, all right, but you call me earlier, next time. Look here, Barney,
you better install a 'phone--telephone haben. Some of you Dutchmen will
be dying one of these days before you can fetch the doctor."

The door closing. Barney's wagon--the wheels silent in the snow, but the
wagon-body rattling. Kennicott clicking the receiver-hook to rouse