and spoke down at her
interlaced fingers; "wonder why it is we both of us dislike her so."

"I've been her doctor," Doctor Keltridge observed, as if that one fact
were sufficient explanation.

"But she must have lucid intervals."

"Precious few," the doctor growled. "What's worse, they are getting
fewer, every week. If I were in Brenton's place, I'd take to drink, and
use that as an excuse for beating her. He's denied that luxury, though,
by what she calls his cloth. To hear her talk, you'd think we laymen
dressed in tissue-paper napkins."

Olive disregarded the digression.

"And yet, she isn't really bad to him."

"Depends on what you call being really bad," the doctor growled again.
"Of course, she doesn't put senna in his tea, nor take tucks in his
Sunday trousers; but she does nip off the tips of all his best growths
with that temper of hers, or else freeze them with her lack of
comprehension. She's a pachyderm and she's a pig; and, if she keeps on,
she'll drag her husband to her level. Brenton's got yeast in him,
Olive, fine, lively yeast. There is no telling what he would rise to,
if only we could succeed in abolishing her."

"If only she wouldn't allude to him in public as His Reverence!" Olive
sighed. "It is almost as bad as her coy flirtation with him, during
sermon time. If I were in his place, I'd brain her."

The doctor pushed his chair back from the table.

"You couldn't," he said concisely. "It's not according to the laws of
nature."

He started for his laboratory. A moment later, he came back again, his
coat under his arm, his hair rampant and his tie already gloriously
askew.

"She can 'Reverence' him all she wants to," he said, casting the words
at Olive as if they had been an iron projectile; "but she doesn't care
one grain for him. In fact, she only cares for the materials shut up
inside her skin. She's a monstrosity of selfishness; that's what she
is, no more fit to be a rector's wife, wife of a man like Brenton, than
a tin can of corned beef with a crack in it. She's poisonous, Olive,
poisonous! Ptomaines aren't in it, by comparison. At least, they're
sudden; and she drags it out to all infinity. Poor Brenton!" And, with
a gulp of sympathetic ire, the doctor vanished, this time to be seen no
more.

Whatever were the doctor's forms of speech, his facts were sound. Not
in vain had he been Scott Brenton's senior warden, all these months;
not in vain Kathryn's medical adviser and unwilli