carriage step once more, and with his hand on the carriage door paused
suddenly. He was sick of sickness, mortally tired of mortality! For
the first time in the whole day he hesitated; an odd, irresolute look
came into his face; he pulled out his watch, glanced, and changing his
first-given address for another, threw himself back on the cushions
with closed eyes. He did not open them again until the carriage,
rolling through many streets, came to a halt under some quiet trees,
before an apartment-house. There were yellow daffodils between white
curtains--very white and high up. As he stepped out, the Doctor
glanced involuntarily towards them, and a half-breath of relief
escaped him, instantly quenched in a nervous frown and jump as his arm
was seized by a firm gloved hand.

"Doctor,--this is really _providential_! You are the very person
I wished to see!"

It was the younger of two heavily upholstered and matronly ladies who
spoke, in a voice of many underscorings. The Doctor, who had removed
his hat with a purely mechanical motion, knew himself a prey,
identified his captor, and eyed her with restrained bitterness.

"Doctor,--it is about my Elsie;--she hasn't a particle of color, and
she complains of feeling languid all the time--"

"No wonder!--What do you expect?"--it was the Doctor's harshest tone.
"She is loaded up with flesh,--she doesn't exercise,--you stuff her.
Send her out with her hoop,--make her drink water,--stop stuffing her.
What she, wants is thinning out."

"_Elsie_!--Why, Doctor, the child eats _nothing_,--I have to