be that because--for some reason or other--his
wife had left him people were taking it out on his practice? That seemed
not only too unfair but too preposterous. Deane was the best doctor in
town. What had his private affairs--no matter what the state of
them--got to do with him as a physician? Surely even _that_ town
couldn't be as two-by-four as that!

But it troubled him so persistently that next morning, when they were
alone together in the attic, he brought himself to broach it to
Harriett, asking, in the manner of one interested in a thing because of
its very absurdity, just what the talk was about Ruth and the Franklins.

Harriett went on to give the town's gossip of how Deane had gone to
Indianapolis to see his wife, to try and make it right, but her people
were strongly of the feeling that she had been badly treated and it had
ended with her going away somewhere with her mother. Harriett sighed
heavily as she said she feared it was one of those things that would not
be made right.

"I call it the limit!" cried Ted. "The woman must be a fool!"

Harriett sadly shook her head. "You don't understand women, Ted," she
said.

"And I don't want to--if _that's_ what they're like!" he retorted hotly.

"I'm afraid Deane didn't--manage very well," sighed Harriett.

"Who wants to manage such a little fool!" snapped Ted.

"Now, Ted--" she began, but "You make me _tired_, Harriett!" he broke in
passionately, and no more was said of it then.

They worked in silence for awhile, Ted raising a great deal of dust in
the way he threw things about, Harriett looking through a box of old
books and papers, sighing often. Harriett sighed a great deal, it seemed
to Ted, and yet something about Harriett made him sorry for her. From
across the attic he looked at her, awkwardly sitting on the floor,
leaning against an old trunk. She looked tired and he thought with
compassion and remorse for the rough way he had spoken to her, of how
her baby was only a little more than two months old, that it must be
hard for her to be doing the things she was doing that week. Harriett
had grown stout; she had that settled look of many women in middle life;
she looked as if she couldn't change much--in any way. Well, Ted
considered, he guessed Harriett couldn't change much; she was just fixed
in the way she was and that was all there was to it. But she did not
look happy in those things she had settled into; she looked patient. She
seemed to thi