and the smile which invariably accompanied it, were the
main stock in trade of the monthly nurse. Upon these two items, she had
based her popularity which now had endured for more than a dozen years
of escorting over the threshold of this world the sons and daughters of
"first families only," as her professional card insisted. To be sure,
the constant employment of the phrase had robbed it of all critical
significance. Indeed, it is very doubtful whether, even at the start of
her career, the nurse had ever linked it in her mind with the great god
Apollo. From some one of her predecessors, she had picked it up and
found that it fitted well upon her tongue. Later, the "fibbouses"
abounded more and more plenteously, as her clientage increased, and she
applied the term indiscriminately, regardless whether the recipient
were an Apollo, or a mere Diana.

However, from the start, Reed Opdyke certainly deserved the phrase.
Long generations of clean, high-minded living cannot fail to produce an
effect upon their offspring. Reed's father had branched off from a line
of lawyers to hold the chair of chemistry in one of the great colleges
for girls. Reed's mother was of Pilgrim stock, well-nigh untainted by
the blood of later, lesser arrivals on the Massachusetts shore. On
either side of the house, it had been a matter of simple creed to hold
one's body and one's mind equally aloof from possibilities of disease.
Reed Opdyke's make-up showed the value of this creed.

Not that he thought very much about it, however. He accepted as a
matter of course his sanity, very much as he accepted most other things
that came in his way. His loosely curled fists within his pockets, his
head erect and his lips smiling, he went striding along through life,
taking the best of it as his natural right, and letting the rest of it
alone. From kindergarten into school and from school into college, the
old, old road trodden by all his ancestors, he journeyed quite as a
matter of course. In fact, it never struck him that any fellow could do
otherwise; never, that is, until he met Scott Brenton.

For Scott, in time, had also come to college. His mother had insisted
upon that; had worked for it that it might in time be possible; had
scrimped and toiled and saved, the while she had been training her only
child to a strict economy which, however galling, he must accept as
well worth the while for the sake of all that it was going to put
within his grasp. Acc