In this somewhat protracted excursion I have not forgotten that I left
Mr. Talbert leaning against our party fence, with his arms resting on
the top, after a keen if not critical survey of his dwelling. He did
not take up our talk at just the point where we had been in it, but
after a reflective moment, he said, "I don't remember just whether Mrs.
Temple told my mother-in-law you were homoeopaths or allopaths."

"Well," I said, "that depends. I rather think we are homoeopaths of a
low-potency type." My neighbor's face confessed a certain
disappointment. "But we are not bigoted, even in the article of
appreciable doses. Our own family doctor in our old place always
advised us, in stress of absence from him, to get the best doctor
wherever we happened to be, so far as we could make him out, and not
mind what school he was of. I suppose we have been treated by as many
allopaths as homoeopaths, but we're rather a healthy family, and put it
all together we have not been treated a great deal by either."

Mr. Talbert looked relieved. "Oh, then you will have Dr. Denbigh. He
puts your rule the other way, and gets the best patient he can, no
matter whether he is a homoeopath or an allopath. We have him, in all
our branches; he is the best doctor in Eastridge, and he is the best
man. I want you to know him, and you can't know a doctor the way you
ought to, unless he's your family physician."

"You're quite right, I think, but that's a matter I should have to
leave two-thirds of to my wife: women are two-thirds of the patients in
every healthy family, and they ought to have the ruling voice about the
doctor." We had formed the habit already of laughing at any appearance
of joke in each other, and my neighbor now rolled his large head in
mirth, and said: