pped
him. "No," he said, "put up your pocketbook, Joe. I don't want any
money. I get this medicine at wholesale, and it don't cost much."

"I come prepared to pay," said the man. He straightened his shoulders
and flushed.

"Oh, well," said Doctor Gordon, "wait. If you need more medicine, or it
seems necessary that I should drive over to see your wife, you can do a
little work on my garden in the spring, or you can let me have a bushel
of your new potatoes when they are grown next summer, or some apples,
and we'll call it square. Wait; I don't want any money for that bottle
of medicine to-night anyhow. Did you walk over, Joe?"

Joe said that he had walked over. "Aaron might just as well drive you
home as not," said Gordon. "The sooner your wife has that medicine the
better. How is the baby getting along?"

"First-rate. I'd just as soon walk, doctor."

For answer Gordon opened the door and called Aaron, and told him to
hitch up and take the man home.

"Doctor Elliot has gone with the bay," said Aaron. "The teams are about
played out, and there's nothin' except the gray."

"Take her then."

"She looked when I fed her jest now as if she was half a mind to balk at
takin' her feed," Aaron remarked doubtfully.

"Nonsense! Give her a loose rein, and she'll be all right."

Aaron went out grumbling.

Gordon offered the man a cigar, which he accepted as if it had been a
diamond. "I'll save it up for next Sunday, when I've got a little time
to sense it," he said. "I know what your cigars be."

Gordon forced another upon him, and the man looked as pleased as a
child.

Presently a shout was heard, and Gordon opened the office door.

"Here's Aaron with the buggy," he said.

He stood in the doorway watching, but the gray, instead of balking, went
out of the yard with an angry plunge. Gordon shook his head.

"Confound him, he's pulling too hard on the lines," he muttered. Then he
closed and locked the office door, and went into the living-room to find
it deserted. Gordon called up the stairs. "Have you gone to bed, Clara?"
His voice was at once tenderly solicitous and angry.

Mrs. Ewing answered him from above, and in her tone was something
propitiating. "Yes, Tom, dear," she called.

Gordon hesitated a moment. His face took on its expression of utmost
misery. "Is--the pain very bad?" he called then, and called as if he
were in actual fear.

"No, dear," the woman's patient, beseeching voice answered, "not very
b