nexhaustible flow of statement, conjecture and misgiving, which was
by no means affected by her profound and inexpugnable ignorance of the
principles of health. From time to time she forgot which side her liver
was on, but she had been doctored (as she called it) for all her organs,
and she was willing to be doctored for any one of them that happened
to be in the place where she fancied a present discomfort. She was not
insensible to the claims which her husband's disorders had upon science,
and she liked to end the tale of her own sufferings with some such
appeal as: "I wish you could do something for Mr. Landa, too, docta."
She made him take a little of each medicine that was left for her; but
in her presence he always denied that there was anything the matter with
him, though he was apt to follow the doctor out of the room, and get a
prescription from him for some ailment which he professed not to believe
in himself, but wanted to quiet Mrs. Lander's mind about.

He rose early, both from long habit, and from the scant sleep of an
elderly man; he could not lie in bed; but his wife always had her
breakfast there and remained so long that the chambermaid had done up
most of the other rooms and had leisure for talk with her. As soon as he
was awake, he stole softly out and was the first in the dining-room for
breakfast. He owned to casual acquaintance in moments of expansion that
breakfast was his best meal, but he did what he could to make it his
worst by beginning with oranges and oatmeal, going forward to beefsteak
and fried potatoes, and closing with griddle cakes and syrup, washed
down with a cup of cocoa, which his wife decided to be wholesomer than
coffee. By the time he had finished such a repast, he crept out of the
dining-room in a state of tension little short of anguish, which he
confided to the sympathy of the bootblack in the washroom.

He always went from having his shoes polished to get a toothpick at the
clerk's desk; and at the Middlemount House, the morning after he had
been that drive with Mrs. Lander, he lingered a moment with his elbows
beside the register. "How about a buckboa'd?" he asked.

"Something you can drive yourself"--the clerk professionally dropped his
eye to the register--"Mr. Lander?"

"Well, no, I guess not, this time," the little man returned, after a
moment's reflection. "Know anything of a family named Claxon, down the
road, here, a piece?" He twisted his head in the direction he