“I hope he is at home and asleep,” was the reply.  “He has been working very hard lately, and was up the greater part of last night.  He was coming here when he received your message, but I told him he should not do it; I would come myself, and if I found it absolutely necessary that you should see him, I would let him know.  And now what is the trouble, Miss Panney?”

Miss Panney fixed her eyes steadfastly upon her visitor, who had taken a seat by the bedside.

“Catherine Tolbridge,” said she, “do you know what will happen to you, if you don’t look out?  You’ll lose that man.”

“Lose him!” exclaimed the other.

“Yes, just that,” replied the old lady; “I have seen it over and over again.  Down they drop, right in the middle of their harness.  And the stouter and sturdier they are, the worse it is for them; they think they can do anything, and they do it.  I’ll back a skinny doctor against a burly one, any day.  He knows there are things he can’t do.  He doesn’t try, and he keeps afloat.”

“That is exactly what I am trying to do,” said the doctor’s wife, “and if those are your opinions, Miss Panney, don’t you think that the doctor’s patients ought to have a regard for his health, and that they ought not to make him come to them in all sorts of weather, and at all hours of the day, unless there is something serious the matter with them?  Now I don’t believe there is anything serious the matter with you today.”

“There is always something serious the matter with a person of my age,” said Miss Panney, “and as for Dr. Tolbridge’s visits to me doing him any harm, it is all stuff and nonsense.  They do him good; they rest him; they brighten him up.  He’s never livelier than when he is with me.  He doesn’t have to hang over me all the night, giving me this and that, to keep the breath in my body, when he ought to be taking the rest that he needs more than any of us.”

Mrs. Tolbridge laughed.  “No, indeed,” said she, “he never has to do anything of that kind for you.  I believe you are the healthiest patient he has.”

“That may be,” said the other, “and it is much to his credit, and to mine, too.  I know when I want a doctor.  I don’t send for him when I am in the last stages of anything.  But we won’t talk anything more about that.  I want to know all about your husband.  Do you think he is really out of health?”

“No,” said Mrs. Tolbridge, “he is simply overworked, and needs rest.  Just the sort of rest I hope he is getting this afternoon.”

“Nonsense,” said Miss Panney; “rest is well enough, but you must give him more than that if you do not want to see him break down.  You must give him good victuals.  Rest, without the best of food, amounts to little in his case.”

“Truly, Miss Panney!” exclaimed her visitor, “I think I give my husband as good living as any one in Thorbury has or can expect.”

“Humph!” said the old lady.  “He may have all that, and yet be starving before your eyes.  There isn’t a man, woman, or child, in or about Thorbury, who really lives well—­excepting, perhaps, myself.”