ot patience you can do without health."

"I don't think you're much in need of a doctor, Mrs. Fay," he laughed.

"I am," she declared, savagely. "I am, because I 'ain't got either of
'em; and if I had I'd give them both for something else." She held him
with her wild gray eyes, as she said: "I'd give 'em both for money.
Money's better than patience and better than health. If I had money I
shouldn't care how sick I was, or how unhappy. If I had money my son
wouldn't be in jail."

Though startled, he knew that, like a confessor, he must show no sign of
surprise. He remembered now that there had been a boy in the Fay family,
two or three years younger than himself. "I didn't know--" he began,
sympathetically.

"You didn't know, because we're not even talked about. If your brother
was in jail for stealing money it's the first thing the town would
tattle of. But you've been back from your travels for a year or more,
and you 'ain't even heard that our Matt is doing three years at
Colcord."

"But you'd rather people didn't hear it, wouldn't you?"

"I'd rather that they'd care whether I'm alive or dead," she said,
fiercely. "I've lived all my life in this village, and my ancestors
before me. Fay's family has done the same. But we're pushed aside and
forgotten. It's as much as ever if some one will tell you that Jasper
Fay raises lettuce in the winter, and cucumbers in spring, and a few
flowers all the year round, and can't pay his rent. I don't believe
you've heard that much. _Have_ you?"

He dodged the subject by asking the usual professional questions and
giving some elementary professional advice. "I'm afraid, Mrs. Fay,
you're taking a discouraged view of life," he went on, by way of doing
his duty.

She sat still more erect in her arm-chair, her eyes flashing. "If you'd
seen yourself driven to the wall for more'n thirty year, and if when you
got to the wall you were crushed against it, and crushed again, wouldn't
you take a discouraged view of life? I've lived on bread and water, or
pretty near it, ever since I was married, and what's come of it? We're
worse off than we ever were. Fay's put everything he could scrape
together into this bit of land, and now your father is shilly-shallying
again about renewing the lease."

"Oh, so that's it!"

"That's it--but it's only some of it. Look out there. All Fay's sweat
and blood and all of mine is in those greenhouses and that ground. It's
everything we've got to live o