“It’s just come to my mind now,” mused Miss Mattie, ignoring his thoughtfulness, “about the minister’s sermon Sunday.  He said that everything that came to us might teach us something if we only looked for it.  I’ve been thinkin’ as I set here, what a heap I’ve learned about my back this mornin’.  I never sensed, until now, that it was used in walkin’.  I reckoned that my back was just kind of a finish to me and was to keep the dust out of my vital organs more’n anything else.  This mornin’ I see that the back is entirely used in walkin’.  What gets me is that Barbara North had to have crutches when her back was all right.  Nothin’ was out of kilter but her legs, and only one of ’em at that.”

“Here’s your paper, Mother.”  Roger pulled The Metropolitan Weekly out of his pocket.

“Lay it down on the table, please.  It oughtn’t to have come until to-morrow.  I ain’t got time for it now.”

“Why, Mother?  Don’t you want to read?”

[Sidenote:  Proper Care]

The knot of hair on the back of Miss Mattie’s head seemed to rise, and her protruding wire hairpins bristled.  “I should think you’d know,” she said, indignantly, “when you’ve been takin’ time from the law to read your pa’s books to Barbara North, that no sick person has got the strength to read.  Even if my disease is only in one word when hers is in three, I reckon I’m goin’ to take proper care of myself.”

“But you’re sitting up and she can’t,” explained Roger, kindly.

“Sittin’ up or not sittin’ up ain’t got nothin’ to do with it.  If my back was set in mortar as it ought to have been, I wouldn’t be settin’ up either.  I can’t get up without screamin’, and as long as I’ve knowed Barbara she’s never been that bad.  That new-fangled doctor hasn’t come out of North’s yet, either.  How much do you reckon he charges for a visit?”

“Two or three dollars, I suppose.”

Miss Mattie clucked sharply with her false teeth. “‘Cordin’ to that,” she calculated, “he was here about twenty cents’ worth.  But I’m willin’ to give him a quarter—­that’s a nickel extra for the time he was writin’ out the recipe for them long narrow pills that would choke anybody but a horse if they happened to go down crossways.  There he comes, now.  If he don’t come here of his own accord, you go out and get him, Roger.  I want he should finish his visit.”

[Sidenote:  The Doctor’s Visit]

But it was not necessary for Roger to go.  “Of his own accord,” Doctor Conrad came across the street and opened the creaky white gate.  When he came in, he brought with him the atmosphere of vitality and good cheer.  He had, too, that gentle sympathy which is the inestimable gift of the physician, and which requires no words to make itself felt.

His quick eye noted the box of capsules upon the table, as he sat down and took Miss Mattie’s rough, work-worn hand in his.  “How is it?” he asked.  “Better?”