is," he had groaned miserably.
"Some day I may want to go home--and think of introducing Augusta
Kunkel!"

"You are wrong there," she had replied with conviction, "Augusta has
possibilities. She has good eyes, her voice is low, her English is far
better than you might expect, and, best of all, she's tall and slender.
If she was short and fat I'd call her rather hopeless, but you hang good
clothes on these slim ones and it works wonders. Besides, she's
imitative as a parrot."

He had thrown his arms aloft in despair.

"But think of it!--the rest of my life--with a parrot."

"It's the lesser of two evils," she had urged, and in the end he had
said dully:

"I guess you're right, Dr. Harpe. Your advice no doubt is good, though,
like your medicine, a bitter dose just now. You've done me a favor, I
suppose, and I'll not forget it."

"When the door of her office had closed upon his broad back she had said
to herself:

"I'll see that you don't forget it." And she repeated it again with
renewed satisfaction. She liked the feeling that she already had become
a factor in the affairs of Crowheart and she intended to remain one.

The practice of medicine with Dr. Harpe was frankly for personal gain.
No ideals had influenced her in the choice of her profession and her
practice of it had developed no ambition save the single one of
building up a bank account. The ethical distinction between the trades
and professions, which is based upon the fact that the professional man
or woman is supposed to take up his or her life work primarily because
he loves both his profession and the people whom it may benefit, was a
distinction which she never had grasped. She practised medicine in the
same commercial spirit that a cheap drummer builds up a trade. She had
no sentiment regarding it, none of the ambitious dreams of high
professional standing attained by meritorious work which inspire those
who achieve. It was a business pure and simple; each patient was a
customer.

Another consideration in her choice of this profession was the freedom
it gave her. Because of it she was exempt from many of the restrictions
and conventionalities which hampered her sex, and above all else she
disliked restraint.

She was the single result of a "typhoid romance." Her mother, a trained
nurse, had attended a St. Louis politician during a long illness. Upon
his recovery he married his nurse and as promptly deserted her,
providing a modest support for