her freshness, drawn from the reservoir of her vitality; and that was a
pity, because, as Patsy Kernaghan many a time said: "Aw, Doctor dear,
what's the good of a tongue to a wagon if there's only wan horse to draw
it! Shure, you'll think a lot more of yourself whin you're able to stand
at the head of your own table and say grace for two at least, and
thanksgiving for manny, if it's the will of God."

The Young Doctor did not know why he was so brittle, but the truth is he
was feeding on himself, and that is a poor business. Every dog knows it
is good to feed on the knuckle of a goat if he hasn't got a beefbone, and
every real man knows--though to know anything at all he must have been
married--that any marriage is better than no marriage at all; because
whether it's happy or unhappy, it makes you concerned for some one
besides yourself, if you have any soul or sense at all.

The Young Doctor was under the delusion that he loved his lonely table
and the making of a simple salad for a simple man, but then he came from
Ireland and had imagination; and that is always a curse when it isn't a
blessing, for there is nothing between the two. At the end of his
troubled day he almost cursed the salad as it crinkled in the dish just
slightly rubbed with garlic. He was turning away in apathy from it--from
the bones with the marrow oozing out of the ends, from the bursting baked
potatoes, from the beautiful crusts of brown bread, when he heard the
door-bell ring. At the sound his face set as though it were mortar. He
wanted no patients this night; but from the peremptory sound of the bell
he was sure some one had come who needed medicine or the knife, and he
could refuse neither; for was he not at everybody's beck and call, the
Medicine Man whose door was everybody's door!

"Damnation!" he said aloud, and turned towards the door expectantly.