“Oh, well, if you persist!  Where are you off to this morning?”

“Mother Turner’s.”

“Is she ill?”

“Probably not.  I think myself she’s too old to ever be really ill any more.  At ninety-eight the body is too well seasoned to admit disease.  She will just run peacefully down like a clock some day.”

“Does she still smoke her pipe, Doctor?”

[Illustration:  “NOW WHAT HAVE YOU TO SAY?” HE DEMANDED]

“All day long, I think.  I remonstrated with her once ten or fifteen years ago when she had a touch of pleurisy.  ‘Mrs. Turner,’ I said, ’if you persist in smoking, you’ll injure your health and die young.’  She was then eighty-something.  ‘Doctor,’ said she, with a twinkle in those bright little eyes of hers, ’I’ll live to be a hundred, and that’s more than you’ll do.’  And, bless me, I think she will!  To-day she sent word for me to ‘look in.’  That means that she needs gossip and not medicine.  Well, I’m glad to go.  It always does me good to talk with Mother Turner.  She’s the best lesson in contentment I know.  She’s buried two husbands, seven children, and the dear Lord only knows how many grandchildren, she lives on charity and hasn’t a soul near her she can claim relationship to, and she’s as cheerful as that oriole up there, and almost as bright.  The pathetic part of it is that she can’t read any more, although she puts on her spectacles and pretends that she can.  Three years ago she confided to me that her eye-sight was ’failing a bit.’  She’s not blind yet, by any means, but print’s beyond her.  And so when I see her she always gets me to read to her a little, explaining that her eyes ‘be a bit watery this morning.’  Sometimes it’s the Bible, but more often it’s a newspaper that some one has left.  Just now her hobby is airships.  She can’t hear enough about airships.”  The Doctor chuckled.  “She’s been on a train but once in her life, she tells me, and that was thirty years ago.”

“I don’t want to live that long,” said Eve thoughtfully.  “I don’t want to live after every one I’ve cared for has gone.”

“So you think now,” replied the Doctor, with a faint shrug of his shoulders, “but wait till you are old.  I’ve seen many snuffed out, my dear, but there’s only one or two I recall who went willingly.  The love of life is a strong passion.  Bless my soul, what’s that?”

The Doctor turned toward the lilac hedge and the neighboring cottage, listening.  Eve laughed, merrily.

“Why, that’s Zephania,” she said.

  “’We shall sleep, but not forever,
    There will be a glorious dawn! 
  We shall meet to part, no, never,
    On the resurrection morn!’”

sang Zephania, in her piping voice.  The Doctor smiled.  Then he nodded sideways in the direction of the voice.

“Have you seen our host this morning?” he asked.

“No,” said Eve.

“I wonder,” he chuckled, “if I hadn’t better go over and administer a bromide.  These fashionable dinner-parties—­” He shook his head eloquently.