“You’re quite right, I think, but that’s a matter I should have to leave two-thirds of to my wife:  women are two-thirds of the patients in every healthy family, and they ought to have the ruling voice about the doctor.”  We had formed the habit already of laughing at any appearance of joke in each other, and my neighbor now rolled his large head in mirth, and said: 

“That’s so, I guess.  But I guess there won’t be any trouble about Mrs. Temple’s vote when she sees Denbigh.  His specialty is the capture of sensible women.  They all swear by him.  You met him, didn’t you, at my office, the other day?”

“Oh yes, and I liked him so much that I wished I was sick on the spot!”

“That’s good!” my neighbor said, joyfully.

“Well, you could meet the doctor there almost any afternoon of the week, toward closing-up hours, and almost any evening at our house here, when he isn’t off on duty.  It’s a generally understood thing that if he isn’t at home, or making a professional visit, he’s at one place or the other.  The farmers round stop for him with their buggies, when they’re in a hurry, and half our calls over the ’phone are for Dr. Denbigh.  The fact is he likes to talk, and if there’s any sort of man that I like to talk with better than another, it’s a doctor.  I never knew one yet that didn’t say something worth while within five minutes’ time.  Then, you know that you can be free with them, be yourself, and that’s always worth while, whether you’re worth while yourself or not.  You can say just what you think about anybody or anything, and you know it won’t go farther.  You may not be a patient, but they’ve always got their Hippocratic oath with them, and they’re safe.  That so?”

My neighbor wished the pleasure of my explicit assent; my tacit assent he must have read in my smile.  “Yes,” I said, “and they’re always so tolerant and compassionate.  I don’t want to say anything against the reverend clergy; they’re oftener saints upon earth than we allow; but a doctor is more solid comfort; he seems to understand you exponentially.”

“That’s it!  You’ve hit it!  He’s seen lots of other cases like yours, and next to a man’s feeling that he’s a peculiar sufferer, he likes to know that there are other fellows in the same box.”

We both laughed at this; it was, in fact, a joke we were the joint authors of.

“Well, we don’t often talk about my ailments; I haven’t got a great many; and generally we get on some abstract topic.  Just now we’re running the question of female education, perhaps because it’s impersonal, and we can both treat of it without prejudice.”

“The doctor isn’t married, I believe?”

“He’s a widower of long standing, and that’s the best kind of doctor to have:  then he’s a kind of a bachelor with practical wisdom added.  You see, I’ve always had the idea that women, beginning with little girls and ending with grandmothers, ought to be brought up as nearly like their brothers as can be—­that is, if they are to be the wives of other women’s brothers.  It don’t so much matter how an old maid is brought up, but you can’t have her destiny in view, though I believe if an old maid could be brought up more like an old bachelor she would be more comfortable to herself, anyway.”