commencement. I guess maybe she is glad enough to have me alive not to
mind much. I'm some glad to be alive myself."

The letter ended with affectionate greetings to the older doctor from his
nephew and junior assistant. With it came another epistle from the same
city from an old doctor friend who had watched Philip Holiday, himself,
grow up, and had immediately set his eye on the younger Holiday, when he
had discovered the relationship.

"You have a lad to be proud of in that Larry of yours," he wrote. "He is
on the job early and late, no smart Alecness, no shirking, no fool
questions, just there on the spot when you want him with cool head,
steady nerves and a hand as gentle as a woman's. I like his quality,
Phil. Quality shows up at a time like this. He is true Holiday, through
and through, and you can tell him I said so when you see him."

The doctor smiled, well pleased at this tribute to Ned's son and this
letter, like Larry's, he handed to his wife Margery to read.

The thirties had touched "Miss Margery" lightly. She was still slim and
girlish-looking. In her simple gown of that forgetmenot blue shade which
her husband particularly loved she seemed scarcely older than she had on
that day, some eight years earlier, when he had found her giving a Fourth
of July party to the Hill youngsters, and had begun to lose his heart to
her then and there. It was not by shedding care and responsibility,
however, that she had kept her youth. It was by no means the easiest
thing in the world to be a busy doctor's wife, the mother of two lively
children and faithful daughter to an invalid and rather "difficult"
mother-in-law, as well as to care for a big house and an elastic
household, which in vacation time included Ned Holiday's children and