ad a round! People are beginning to send for
me now as the last from school. They think I'm up to the latest
dodges. The old men won't like it! I had to go out to the Pettericks
to see that girl Bertha again. Their family doctor could make nothing
of her case, but it's simple enough. The girl's hysterical, that's
what she is; and I know what I'd like to prescribe for her, and that's
a husband. Hee-hee! Soon cure her hysterics! As to the old girl, her
mother, she's got"--then followed a minute description of her
ailments, told in the baldest language. Of two words Dan always chose
the coarsest in talking to Beth, now that they were married, which had
made her writhe at first; but when she had remonstrated, he assumed an
injured air, after which she silently endured the infliction for fear
of wounding him. And it was the same with regard to his patients. The
first time he described the ailment of a lady patient, and made gross
comments about her, Beth had exclaimed--

"O Dan! what would she think of you if she knew you had told me?
Surely it is a breach of confidence!"

"Well," he exclaimed, trying to wither her with a look, "you _have_ a
nice opinion of your husband! Is it possible that I cannot speak to my
own wife without bringing such an accusation upon myself! Well, well!
And I'm slaving for you morning, noon, and night, to keep you in some
sort of decency and comfort; and when I come home, and do my best to
be cheery and amuse you, instead of being morose after the strain of
the day, as most men are, all the thanks I get is a speech like that!
O holy matrimony!"

"I did not mean to annoy you, Dan; I'm sorry," Beth protested.

"So you should be!" he said; "so you should be! It's mighty hard for
me to feel that my own wife hasn't confidence enough in me to be sure
that I should never say a word either to her or anybody else about any
of my patients to which they'd object."

"People feel differently on the subject, perhaps," Beth ventured. "I
only know that if I had a doctor who talked to his wife about my
complaints, I should"--despise him, was what she was going to say, but
she changed the phrase--"I should not like it. But you should know
what your own patients feel about it better than I do."

Even as she spoke, however, her mother's remark of long ago about a
"talking doctor" recurred to her, and she felt lowered in her own
estimation by the kind of concession she was making to him. The
tragedy of such a ma