ons that had ruined most of
the teeth and stomachs in the town; her disdain of the homeopaths, with
their petty pills and their silly notion that the hair of the dog would
cure its bite. She was all for the medicine of nature and common sense;
and Madelene, able honestly to assent, rose in her esteem by leaps and
bounds. Before the end of that conversation Mrs. Ranger was convinced
that she had always believed the doctors should be women. "Who
understands a woman but a woman? Who understands a child but a woman? And
what's a man when he's sick but a child?" She was impatient for the
marriage. And when Madelene asked if she'd object to having a small
doctor's sign somewhere on the front fence, she looked astounded at the
question. "We must do better than that," she said. "I'll have you an
office--just two or three rooms--built down by the street so as to save
people coming clear up here. That'd lose you many a customer."

"Yes, it might lose us a good many," said Madelene, and you'd never have
thought the "us" deliberate.

That capped the climax. Mrs. Ranger was her new daughter's thenceforth.
And Madelene went away, if possible happier than when she and Arthur had
straightened it all out between themselves the night before. Had she not
lifted that fine old woman up from the grave upon which she was wearily
lying, waiting for death? Had she not made her happy by giving her
something to live for? Something to live for! "She looked years
younger immediately," thought Madelene. "That's the secret of
happiness--something to live for, something real and useful."

"I never thought you'd find anybody good enough for you," said Mrs.
Ranger to her son that evening. "But you have. She's got a heart and a
head both--and most of the women nowadays ain't got much of either."

And it was that night as Ellen was saying her prayers, that she asked God
to forgive her the sin of secret protest she had let live deep in a dark
corner of her heart--reproach of Hiram for having cut off their son. "It
was for the best," she said. "I see it now."

CHAPTER XX

LORRY'S ROMANCE

When Charles Whitney heard Arthur was about to be married, he offered him
a place on the office staff of the Ranger-Whitney Company at fifteen
hundred a year. "It is less than you deserve on your record," he wrote,
"but there is no vacancy just now, and you shall go up rapidly. I take
this opportunity to say that I regard your father's will as the finest
ac