From time to time, it seemed that there was a sister of Mr. Talbert’s who visited in the family, but was now away on one of the many other visits in which she passed her life.  She was always going or coming somewhere, but at the moment she was gone.  My wife inferred from the generation to which her brother belonged that she had long been a lady of that age when ladies begin to be spoken of as maiden.  Mrs. Talbert spoke of her as if they were better friends than sisters-in-law are apt to be, and said that she was to be with them soon, and she would bring her with her when she returned my wife’s call.  From the general impression in Eastridge we gathered that Miss Talbert was not without the disappointment which endears maiden ladies to the imagination, but the disappointment was of a date so remote that it was only matter of pathetic hearsay, now.  Miss Talbert, in her much going and coming, had not failed of being several times in Europe.  She especially affected Florence, where she was believed to have studied the Tuscan School to unusual purpose, though this was not apparent in any work of her own.  We formed the notion that she might be uncomfortably cultured, but when she came to call with Mrs. Talbert afterward, my wife reported that you would not have thought, except for a remark she dropped now and then, that she had ever been out of her central New York village, and so far from putting on airs of art, she did not speak of any gallery abroad, or of the pensions in which she stayed in Florence, or the hotels in other cities of Italy where she had stopped to visit the local schools of painting.

In this somewhat protracted excursion I have not forgotten that I left Mr. Talbert leaning against our party fence, with his arms resting on the top, after a keen if not critical survey of his dwelling.  He did not take up our talk at just the point where we had been in it, but after a reflective moment, he said, “I don’t remember just whether Mrs. Temple told my mother-in-law you were homoeopaths or allopaths.”

“Well,” I said, “that depends.  I rather think we are homoeopaths of a low-potency type.”  My neighbor’s face confessed a certain disappointment.  “But we are not bigoted, even in the article of appreciable doses.  Our own family doctor in our old place always advised us, in stress of absence from him, to get the best doctor wherever we happened to be, so far as we could make him out, and not mind what school he was of.  I suppose we have been treated by as many allopaths as homoeopaths, but we’re rather a healthy family, and put it all together we have not been treated a great deal by either.”

Mr. Talbert looked relieved.  “Oh, then you will have Dr. Denbigh.  He puts your rule the other way, and gets the best patient he can, no matter whether he is a homoeopath or an allopath.  We have him, in all our branches; he is the best doctor in Eastridge, and he is the best man.  I want you to know him, and you can’t know a doctor the way you ought to, unless he’s your family physician.”