Dr. Breen's Practice

He was a day later than his wife had computed, but as she appeared to have reflected, she had left the intervening Sunday out of her calc

sion of Western humor. He arrived a sleep-broken, travel-creased figure, with more than the Western man's usual indifference to dress; with sad, dull eyes, and an untrimmed beard that hung in points and tags, and thinly hid the corners of a large mouth. He took her hand laxly in

adies who were physicians. He had a certain neighborly manner of having known her a long time, and of being on good terms with her; and somewhere there resided in his loosely knit organism a powerful energy. She had almost to

ht to let you go in," she s

cting me, has n'

s,

he's a

chance to grow. I like to see a town have some chance," he added, with a sadness past tears in his melancholy eyes. "Bella can show me the way to the room, I reckon,"

her head on his shoulder. They did not seem to have been talking, and they did not move when Grace entered the

n his mild, soothing voice. "I used to understand Mrs. Maynard's ways pretty well, and I can take ca

had any sleep on t

ng wanly at her. "I never sleep.

ging to and fro, and followed her out into the corridor, caressing with his large hand the child that lay on hi

t in the end," he said, with the optimistic fatalism which is t

o one on the piazza, which the moonlight printed with the shadows of the posts and the fanciful jigsaw wo

ight, as she knew at once,

arlow. "What ca

ght be Mr. Libby at first

y waited to be questioned further, he added, "He ain't here, for on

she

s he's goi

tay?

over to-morrow, if I can git off, and next day if I can't. Did n't you know he was

athetically, at a lit

satisfied purpose in her heart; and there was somewhere a tremulous sense of support withdrawn. Perhaps this was a mechanical effect of the cessation of her anxiety for Mrs. Maynard, which had been a support as well as a burden. The house was strangely quiet, as if some great noise had just been hushed, and it seemed empty. She felt timid in her room, but she dreaded the next day more than the dark. Her life was changed, and

inst temptation. It passes, and the hero finds, to his dismay and horror, that he has run away; the generous man has been niggard; the gentleman has behaved like a ruffian, and the liberal like a bigot; the champion of truth has foolishly and vainly lied; the steadfast friend has betrayed his neighbor, the just person has oppressed him. This is the fruitful moment, apparently so sterile, in which character may spring and flower anew; but the mood of abject humility in which the theorist of his own character is plunged and struggles for his lost self-respect is full of deceit for others. It

unknown territory that a man who assumes to know them has gone far to master them. He saw that a rude moral force alone seemed to have a charm with his lady patients,-women who had been bred to ease and wealth, and who had cultivated, if not very disciplined, minds. Their intellectual dissipation had apparently made them a different race from the simpler-hearted womenkind of

d misgivings, and the remorse she had tried to confide to him; and if his enjoyment of these foibles of hers took too little account of her pain, it was never his characteristic to be tender of people in good health. He was, indeed, as alien to her Puritan spirit as if he had been born in Naples instead of Corbitant. He came of one of those families which one finds in ne

e first Dr. Mulbridge, survived to illustrate the magnanimity of his fellow-townsmen during the first year of the civil war, as a tolerated Copperhead. Then he died, and his son, who was in the West, looking up a location for practice, was known to have gone out as surgeon with one of the regiments there. I

living in Corbitant; but they would be the last. The commerce of the little port had changed into the whaling trade in their time; this had ceased in turn, and the wharves had rotted away. Dr. Mulbridge found little practice among them; while attending their appointed fate, they were so thoroughly salted against decay as to preserve even their families. But he gradually gathered into his hands, from the clairvoyant and the Indian doctor, the

e anywhere; but they were not surprised that he had come back to live in Corbitant, which was so manifestly the best place in the world, and which, if somewhat lacking in opportunity, was ample in the leisure they believed more congenial to him than success. Some of his lady patients at the hotels, who felt at times that they could not live without him, would have carried him back to the city with them by a gentle violence; but there was nothing in anything he said or did that betrayed ambition on his part. He liked to hear them talk, especially of their ideas of progress, as they called them, at w

n with her, and twittered their patronage of her and her nice old-fashioned parlor, and their praises of his skill in such wise against her echoless silence that she conceived a strong repugnance for all their tribe, in which she naturally included Grace when she appeared. She had decided the girl to be particularly forth-putting, from something prompt and self-reliant in her manner that day; and she viewed with taci

expressed at once her deference to him and her resolution to speak whether he liked it or not. She had not asked him about Mrs. Maynard's sickness, or shown any interest in it; but after she le

with her hand on the lid of the coffee-pot, and her eyes downcast; it was the face of silent deter

assented. "What's that fr

h fri

e one that ca

Yes. What did yo

why you cal

e sort of doctor. Little pills," he added, with an

ter of mine pretending to be

en for a daughter," returned her

e for a mother," Mrs

o see you and Mrs. Breen together. You would make a strong team." He buttered his bread, with another laugh in appreciation of his conceit. "If you happened to pull the same way. If you did n't, something would break. Mrs. Breen is a lady of powerful convictions. She thinks you ought to be good, and you ought to be very sorry for

Mrs. Mulbridge immovably. "Did her m

he believes in the advancement of women; she think

ters it would be the best thing," said Mrs. Mulbridge, opening the lid

though she does n't say so. Probably she wants the women to have women doctors so they won't be so well, and can have

d enough of

y few things that Miss Gleason does n't think can be

on's sentimentality, but she was not very patient with the sketch he, enjoyed

easy generalization, and with a certain pleasure in the projection of these strange figures against her distorting imagination: "You see, mother, that the most advanced thinkers among those ladies are not so very different, after all, from you old-fashio

mother. "Are you going to have anything more to eat?" she asked, w

bout my lady friends at Jocelyn's. Dr. Breen's mother and Miss Gleason don't feel alike about her. Her mother thinks she was weak in giving u

ase her son from telling her anything when she had made her motion to rise; if he chose t

e continued, with a clumsy, but unmistakable suggestion of Miss Gleason's perfervid manner, "'that such a girl should be dragged down by her own

ed his mother, "I c

Gleason thinks her. And Mrs. Maynard does n't consider h

"I guess she would n't have been alive to

told each other anything, and went on as if they knew nothing of each other's affairs, yet when they recognized this knowledge it was without surprise on either side. "I could tell you a different story. She's a very fine girl, mother; cool and careful under instruction, and perfectly tractable and intelligent. She's as different from those othe

ke self-willed women," sa

e up," he answered, wi

eyes, yet. "How long shall y

last profess

you going t

ocely

and met her son's eye. "What m

e frowned a little as he said, "Because I want her to have me, for one thing." His jaw closed heavily, but his face lost a cer

s mother, resenting the implicatio

I'm not particularly young; and for a whil

ho

w that came with

hipper-

The field is 'clear, for all I can see. And she's made a failure in one way, and then you know a wom

, "I presume you know w

t. She removed the dishes, and left him sitting before the empty table-cloth. When she came for that, he took

first or last. And I suppose I ought to feel gl

stripling any longer." He lau

nor any woman that you bring here to be your wife. I've had my day, and I'm not one of the old fools that think they're going to have and to hold forever

er lips firmly. "Speak

e answered, setting her ch

did laugh at them. They're ridiculous. I don't want to marry this girl because she's a doctor. That was the pri

h he was left sitting in the middle of the room. "I presume," she said, with her back toward him, as she straig

s. The chances are that she won't have the courage to take up her plan of life again, and that she'll consider any other that's pressed home upon her. And I take it for a good sign that she's sent that fellow adrift. If her mind had n't been set on some one el

ut apparent interest or sympathy. But at the end she asked, "How are you go

eplied her son. "She seems to ha

She'll have notions of her own. If she's li

tion, or any abnormal love of it. She did it, so far so I can find out, because she wished to do good that way. She's been a little notional, she's had her head addled by women's talk, and

, Rufus, stiff enough, I guess; but I ain't agoin' to deny that you're country born and bred. I can see that, and she

breeding, thinks of himself as a gentleman, and nothing can gall him

the world of you, and flatter you up, and they're as biddable as you please when you're doctorin'

t believe I could have for the turn of my hand, espec

married ones. I guess you'll fi

s been used to hearing called a gentleman; she'd prefer me on that account. But if you come t

cal history, who had gone up to Boston from Corbitant, and had succeeded severally as g

for me at all, she won't care for the

my account that I want you sh

ly, and at the bottom of his indolence and indifference was a fiery pride, not easily kindled, but unquenchable. He flung the harness upon his old unkempt horse, and tackled him to the mud-encrusted buggy, for whose shabbiness he had ne

e, in which he continued to dramatize their different feelings, he kept