made Mother ask to see him and be ill because she couldn't. And just
day before yesterday Father came up the street with the great
inventor, and they both came in and sat with Roxanne and me on the
cottage porch to smoke their cigars. Roxanne was just sweet and good
and easy with Father like she always is. I don't believe that girl was
ever conscious of her feet and hands and blushes In all her life. I
forget mine when I am with her.

Well anyway, Father was delighted with her and showed it plainly. And
if he liked her, he was positively funny when he met Lovelace Peyton.
The snake-doctor came around the house, as usual galloping on the
stick horse, and in one hand he had one of his best bottles full of
something awful to look at and that smelled worse, even through the
cork.

"Mister," he said, looking Father gravely and courteously in the face,
"you got cholera bad and might die to-night if you don't take medicine
quick. It's in this bottle; shake it well." And while the Idol made a
grab for him he put that bottle right in Father's hand and backed off
out of reach.

Roxanne was distressed at Father's having taken that awful smell into
his hands, and Mr. Douglass tried to make him give it back to Lovelace
Peyton; but Father wrapped it in two handkerchiefs and put it, smell
and all, into his pocket.

"Thank you, Doctor Byrd," he said, just as gravely as he talks to the
great surgeons and doctors that come to see Mother. "Shall I report my
condition to you to-morrow?"