aming white mare roused as she heard his voice, and the old
brown-and-white setter sprang into the seat beside him.

"Howdy, girls!" said the old man, his big loose figure bulging
grotesquely over the boundaries of the seat. "Father pretty well?"

"Well enough, Doc' Ben, but not pretty!" Martie said, laughing. The
doctor's eyes twinkled.

"They put a tongue in your head, Martie, sure enough!" he said,
gathering up the reins.

"It was all they did put, then!" Martie giggled.

The girls all liked Doc' Ben. A widower, rich enough now to take only
what practice he pleased, simple in his tastes, he lived with his old
servant, his horse and cow, his dog and cat, chickens and bees, pigeons
and rabbits, in a comfortable, shabby establishment in an unfashionable
part of town. Monroe described him as a "regular character." His
jouncing, fat figure--with tobacco ash spilled on his spotted vest, and
stable mud on his high-laced boots--was familiar in all her highways
and byways. His mellow voice, shot with humorous undertones even when
he was serious, touched with equal readiness upon Plato, the habits of
bees, the growth of fungus, fashions, Wordsworth, the Civil War, or the
construction of chimneys. He was something of a philosopher, something
of a poet, something of a reformer.

Martie, watching him out of sight, said to herself that she really must
go down soon and see old Dr. Ben, poke among his old books, feed his
pigeons, and scold him for his untidy ways. The girl's generous
imagination threw a veil of romance over his life; she told Sally that
he was like some one in an English story.

After he had gone, the girls idled into the Town Library, a large room
with worn linoleum on the floor, and with level sunlight streaming in
the dusty windows. At the long table devoted to magazines a few readers
were sitting; others hovered over the table where books just returned
were aligned; and here and there, before the dim bookcases that lined
the walls, still others loitered, now and then picking a book from the
shelves, glancing at it, and restoring it to its place. The room was
warm and close with the smell of old books. The whisking of pages, and
occasionally a sibilant whisper, were its only sounds. From the ceiling
depended signs, bearing the simple command: "Silence"; but this did not
prevent the girls from whispering to the energetic, gray-haired woman
who presided at the desk.

"Hello, girls!" said Miss Fanny Breck c