y thing to
be feared, and these could be averted by bandaging, repose, and simple
nursing.

The unfailing good humor of the patient under this manipulation, the
quaint originality of his speech, the freedom of his fancy, which was,
however, always controlled by a certain instinctive tact, began to
affect Kate nearly as it had the others. She found herself laughing over
the work she had undertaken in a pure sense of duty; she joined in the
hilarity produced by Lee's affected terror of her surgical mania, and
offered to undo the bandages in search of the thimble he declared she
had left in the wound with a view to further experiments.

"You ought to broaden your practice," he suggested. "A good deal might
be made out of Ned and a piece of soap left carelessly on the first step
of the staircase, while mountains of surgical opportunities lie in
a humble orange peel judiciously exposed. Only I warn you that you
wouldn't find him as docile as I am. Decoyed into a snow-drift and
frozen, you might get some valuable experiences in resuscitation by
thawing him."

"I fancied you had done that already, Kate," whispered Mrs. Hale.

"Freezing is the new suggestion for painless surgery," said Lee, coming
to Kate's relief with ready tact, "only the knowledge should be
more generally spread. There was a man up at Strawberry fell under a
sledge-load of wood in the snow. Stunned by the shock, he was slowly
freezing to death, when, with a tremendous effort, he succeeded in
freeing himself all but his right leg, pinned down by a small log. His
axe happened to have fallen within reach, and a few blows on the log
freed him."

"And saved the poor fellow's life," said Mrs. Scott, who was listening
with sympathizing intensity.

"At the expense of his LEFT LEG, which he had unknowingly cut off under
the pleasing supposition that it was a log," returned Lee demurely.

Nevertheless, in a few moments he managed to divert the slightly shocked
susceptibilities of the old lady with some raillery of himself, and did
not again interrupt the even good-humored communion of the party. The
rain beating against the windows and the fire sparkling on the hearth
seemed to lend a charm to their peculiar isolation, and it was not until
Mrs. Scott rose with a warning that they were trespassing upon the rest
of their patient that they discovered that the evening had slipped by
unnoticed. When the door at last closed on the bright, sympathetic
eyes of the tw