t--a quality that made it always
sound odd, almost foreign, in the midst of the neutral, colorless
middle-western tones about him. He spoke with a Southern accent,
dropping his _r's_, clipping some vowels and broadening others, but
there was no Southern drawl in the clicking, telegraphic speed of his
speech. He now looked up at his tall godchild and said without a smile:
"If you'll kindly come down here where I can get at you, I'll shake you
for being so foolish. You needn't be alarmed about your mother."

Lydia recoiled from the little man as impulsively as she had rushed upon
him. "Why, how _awful_!" she accused herself, horrified. "I'd
_forgotten_ Mother!"

Dr. Melton took off his hat and laid it on the hall shelf. "I will
climb up on a chair to shake you," he continued cheerfully, "if already,
in less than twenty-four hours, you're indulging in nerves, as these
broken and meaningless ejaculations seem to indicate."

He picked up a palm-leaf fan, lost himself in a big hall-chair, and
began to fan himself vigorously. He looked very hot and breathless, but
he flowed steadily on.

"I can't diagnose you yet, you know, without looking at you, the way I
do your mother, so you'll have to give me some notion of what's the
occasion of these alternate seizures and releases of a defenseless
Lilliputian godfather." He made a confident gesture toward the upper
part of the house with his fan. "About your mother--I know without going
upstairs that she is floored with one or another manifestation of the
great disease of social-ambitionitis. But calm yourself. It's not so bad
as it seems when you've got the right doctor. I've practiced for thirty
years among Endbury ladies. They can't spring anything new on me. I've
taken your mother through doily fever induced by the change from
table-cloths to bare tops, through portiere inflammation, through
afternoon tea distemper, through _art-nouveau_ prostration and mission
furniture palsy, not to speak of a horrible attack of acute insanity
over the necessity for having her maids wear caps. I think you can trust
me, whatever dodge the old malady is working on her."

He had run on volubly, to give Lydia time to recover herself, his keen
blue eyes fixing her, and now, as she wavered into something like a
smile at his chatter, he shot a question at her with a complete change
of manner: "But what's the matter with _you_?"

Lydia started as though he had suddenly clapped her on the shoulder.