o we can get a real start, wouldn't it be a good
idea for you to put part of your things in my room, take what you must
have, and fix Mother's bedroom for you, let her move her bed into her
living room, and spare me all you can of your things to fix up your
room for my office this summer. That would save rent, it's only a few
steps from downtown, and when I wasn't busy with patients, I could be
handy to the garden, and to help you."

"If your mother is willing, I'll do my share," said Kate, "although the
room's cramped, and where I'll put the small party when he comes I
don't know, but I'll manage someway. The big objection to it is that
it will make it look to people as if it were a makeshift, instead of
starting a real business."

"Real," was the wrong word. It was the red rag that started George
raging, until to save her self-respect, Kate left the room. Later in
the day he announced that his mother was willing, she would clean the
living room and move in that day. How Kate hated the tiny room with
its one exterior wall, only one small window, its scratched woodwork,
and soiled paper, she could not say. She felt physically ill when she
thought of it, and when she thought of the heat of the coming summer,
she wondered what she would do; but all she could do was to acquiesce.
She made a trip downtown and bought a quart of white paint and a few
rolls of dainty, fresh paper. She made herself ill with turpentine
odours in giving the woodwork three coats, and fell from a table almost
killing herself while papering the ceiling. There was no room for her
trunk; the closet would not hold half her clothes; her only easy chair
was crowded out; she was sheared of personal comfort at a clip, just at
a time when every comfort should have been hers. George ordered an
operating table, on which to massage his patients, a few other
necessities, and in high spirits, went about fixing up his office and
finishing his school. He spent hours in the woodshed with the
remainder of Kate's white paint, making a sign to hang in front of the
house.

He was so pathetically anxious for a patient, after he had put his
table in place, hung up his sign, and paid for an announcement in the
county paper and the little Walden sheet, that Kate was sorry for him.

On a hot July morning Mrs. Holt was sweeping the front porch when a
forlorn specimen of humanity came shuffling up the front walk and asked
to see Dr. Holt. Mrs. Holt took him into