," as she
called them, in the kind of conversation in which men were most at ease,
that which concerned themselves. Thor replied while consuming his soup
in the manner acquired in Parisian and Viennese restaurants frequented
by young men:

"Got a patient."

Hastily Claude introduced a subject of his own. "Ought to go and see
'The Champion,' father. Hear it's awfully good. Begins with a
prize-fight--"

But the father's attention was given to Thor. "Who've you picked up?"

"Fay's wife--Fay, the gardener."

"Indeed? Have to whistle for your fee."

"Oh, I know that--"

"Thor, _please_!" Mrs. Masterman begged. "Don't eat so fast."

"If you know it already," the father continued, "I should think you'd
have tried to squeak out of it." He said "know it alweady" and "twied to
squeak," owing to a difficulty with the letter _r_ which gave an
appealing, childlike quality to his speech. "If you start in by taking
patients who are not going to pay--"

Claude sought another diversion. "What does it matter to Thor? In three
months' time he'll be able to pay sick people for coming to him--what?"

"That's not the point," Masterman explained. "A doctor has no right to
pauperize people"--he said "pauper-wize people"--"any more than any one
else."

"Oh, as to that," Thor said, forcing himself to eat slowly and sit
straight in the style commended by his stepmother, "it won't need a
doctor to pauperize poor Fay."

"Quite right there," his father agreed. "He's done it himself."

Thor considered the moment a favorable one for making his appeal.
"Claude and I have been talking him over--"

"The devil we have!" Claude exclaimed, indignantly.

"What's that?" Masterman's handsome face, which after his day's work was
likely to be gray and lifeless, grew sharply interrogative. Time had
chiseled it to an incisiveness not incongruous with a lingering air of
youth. His hair, mustache, and imperial were but touched with gray. His
figure was still lithe and spare. It was the custom to say of him that
he looked but the brother of his two strapping sons.

Claude emphasized his annoyance. "Talking him over! I like that! You
blow into the office just as I'm ready to come home, and begin
cross-questioning me about father's affairs. I tell you I don't know
anything about them. If you call that talking him over--well, you're
welcome to your own use of terms."

The head of the house busied himself in carving the joint which had been
placed