e new Mrs. Beswick could enjoy the husband for whom
she had waited so long and faithfully, by sitting on the lounge in the
office whenever she had sedentary employment--the same lounge that was
opened out at night into a bed. Both of the Beswicks were inured to
small and hard quarters, and even these they had been obliged to share
with strangers; since, therefore, they must lead a kind of camp life in
the crowded metropolis they found it delightful to season their
perpetual picnic with each other's society. And, moreover, two rooms for
two people seemed by comparison a luxury of expansion. When youth and
love go into partnership they feel no hardships, and for the present the
most renowned doctor in Madison Avenue was probably something less than
half as happy as these two lovers living in a cubbyhole with all the
world before them, though but precious little of it within their reach
beyond two well-worn trunks, three chairs, a table, and a bedstead
lounge.

Dr. Beswick was profoundly unknown to fame, but he was none the less a
great authority on medicine as well as on most other things in the
estimation of Mrs. Beswick, and, for that matter, of himself as well. He
liked, as most men do, to display his knowledge before his wife, and to
her he talked of his patients and of the good advice he had given them
and how he had managed them, and sometimes also of the mistakes of his
competitors; and he treated her to remarks on that favorite theme of
the struggling general practitioner, the narrowness of the celebrated
specialists. When he came back from his visit to Wilhelmina it was with
a smile lighting up all that was visible of his face between two thrifty
patches of red side-whiskers.

"The patient is not very sick, I should say from your face," was Mrs.
Beswick's remark as she finished sewing together the two ends of a piece
of crash for a towel. For this towel the doctor had made a kind of
roller, the night before, by cutting a piece off a broken mop-stick and
hanging it on brackets carved with his jack-knife and nailed to the
closet-door. "I can always tell by your face the condition of the
patient," added Mrs. Beswick.

"That's where you're mistaken this time, my love," he said triumphantly.
"The Schulenberg girl will die within two weeks." And he smiled again at
the thought.

"What do you smile so for? You are not generally so glad to lose a
patient," she said, holding up the towel for his inspection, using her