he talks a great deal worse than he is."

"Because I am a fool," said the doctor again. This time he flushed as he
spoke.

"He doesn't like things common around him," went on Mrs. Sandworth, "any
more than any gentleman does. And as for strangling old Mrs. Burgess,
what good would that do? It can't be she who's influencing Endbury,
because all it's trying to do is to be just like every other town in
Ohio."

"In the Union!" amended Dr. Melton grimly. He subsided after this into
one of his fidgety, grimacing, finger-nail-gnawing reveries. He was
wondering whether he dared tell Lydia of a talk he had had that morning
with her father. After a look at Lydia's flushed, tired face, he decided
that he would better not; but as the two women fell into a discussion of
the layette, the conversation, Mr. Emery's nervous voice, his sharp,
impatient gestures, came back to him vividly. He looked graver and
graver, as he did after each visit to his old friend, and after each
fruitless exhortation to "go slow and rest more." Mr. Emery was in the
midst of a very important trial and, as he had very reasonably reminded
his physician, this was not a good time to relax his grasp on things.
"Now I'm back in practice, in competition with younger men, I _can't_
sag back! It's absurd to ask it of me."

"You were a fool to go back into practice at your age."

"A fool! I've doubled my income."

"Yes; and your arteries--look here, suppose you were dead. The bar would
get along without you, wouldn't it?"

"But I'm not dead," the other truthfully opposed to this fallacious
supposition, and turned again to his papers.

The doctor shut his medicine case with a spiteful snap. "Don't fool
yourself that it's devotion to the common weal that drives you ahead!
Don't make a pretty picture of yourself as working to the last in heroic
service of your fellow-man! You know, as I know, that if you dropped out
this minute, American jurisprudence would continue on its triumphant,
misguided way quite as energetically as now."

Mr. Emery looked up, dropping for once the mask of humorous tolerance
with which he was accustomed to hide any real preoccupation of his own.
"Look here, Melton, I'm too nervous to stand much fooling these days. If
you want to know the reason why I'm going on, I'll tell you. I've got
to. I need the money."

"Gracious powers! Did you get caught in that B. and R. slump?"

The Judge smiled a little bitterly. "No; I haven't lost any m