ly
not used to the whirl of the pool, had skated all day, and, kept going by
unaccustomed stimulants, taken half from ignorance, half from bravado,
had danced the evening through at the club house, and then collapsed. Her
hostess, careless through familiarity with it, had given her a dose of
one of the chloral mixtures "to let her have a good night's sleep"; but
instead it had sent her into hysterics, and she was calling wildly for
her mother to come and take her home. Father returned from both visits
fairly white with rage. Not at the unfortunates themselves, be it said,
but at the cool nonchalance of those who summoned him.

The butler's was a common enough case. That of the young girl moved him
to pity, and then indignation, as he sifted, out the cause of the attack,
in order to treat her intelligently. This questioning Mrs. Ponsonby
resented most emphatically, telling him "to attend to his business and
not treat ladies as if they were criminals." This to a man of father's
professional ability, and one of over sixty years of age in the bargain.

"Madam," said he, "you _are_ a criminal; for to my thinking all
preventable illness, such as this, is a crime. Leave the room, and when I
have soothed this poor child I will go home; and remember, do not send
for me again; it will be useless."

Never a word did he say of the matter at home, though I read part in his
face; but the Ponsonby's housekeeper, a countrywoman of Martha Corkle's,
took the news to her, adding "and the missus stepped lively too, she
did; only, law's sakes, by next mornin' she'd forgot all about it, and,
we being short-handed, wanted me to go down with James and get the Doctor
up to spray her throat for a hoarseness, and I remindin' her what he'd
said, she laughed and answered, 'He had a bear's manners,' but to go tell
him she'd pay him city prices, and she bet that would mend him and them!"

I took good care not to repeat this to father, for he would be wounded.
He is beginning to see that they use him as a sort of ambulance surgeon,
but he does not yet understand the absolute money insolence of these
people to those not of their "set," whom they consider socially or
financially beneath them, and I hope he never may. He is so full of good
will to all men, so pitiful toward weakness and sin, and has kept his
faith in human nature through thirty-five years' practice in a factory
town, hospital wards, charcoal camp, and among the odd characters of the
s