be so glad to give you a cup of tea--or a little music--and it always
rests you so."

The Doctor took the things from her hands; he looked abstractedly at
his wife, then stooped hurriedly and kissed her.

"Don't worry about me; I shall be all right," he said, as he hastened
from the room. It was characteristic of him that he forgot his
clinical thermometer, and was never known to have a prescription-pad
or pencil.

One servant opened the house door for him, and another the carriage
door; the Doctor stepped in quickly, growling out a direction and
ignoring the bows of his retainers. He kept his own for the benefit of
his clients, he was wont cynically to say. He settled himself in the
seat, and before the door was fairly closed had lighted a cigar and
unfurled a medical journal.

As the carriage whirled recklessly down the street and around corners,
several feminine patients looked longingly after, as if virtue went
out from it, and several masculine ones raised their hats, but the
Doctor, his eyes glued to the paper, saw none of them.

Perhaps his most restful moments were these spent in his brougham. It
was almost his only time for reading; he had found, moreover, that
this served to keep his mind fresh from case to case, detaching it
from one train of thought and bringing it with new concentration to
the next. These brief intervals belonged wholly to himself. His home
was never safe from invasion, and little time and less strength
remained to him for domestic joys.