“It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole community, if he wanted to—­if he saw it.  He’s usually the only man in the neighborhood who has any scientific training, isn’t he?”

“Yes, that’s so, but I guess most of us get rusty.  We land in a rut of obstetrics and typhoid and busted legs.  What we need is women like you to jump on us.  It’d be you that would transform the town.”

“No, I couldn’t.  Too flighty.  I did used to think about doing just that, curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted away from the idea.  Oh, I’m a fine one to be lecturing you!”

“No!  You’re just the one.  You have ideas without having lost feminine charm.  Say!  Don’t you think there’s a lot of these women that go out for all these movements and so on that sacrifice——­”

After his remarks upon suffrage he abruptly questioned her about herself.  His kindliness and the firmness of his personality enveloped her and she accepted him as one who had a right to know what she thought and wore and ate and read.  He was positive.  He had grown from a sketched-in stranger to a friend, whose gossip was important news.  She noticed the healthy solidity of his chest.  His nose, which had seemed irregular and large, was suddenly virile.

She was jarred out of this serious sweetness when Marbury bounced over to them and with horrible publicity yammered, “Say, what do you two think you’re doing?  Telling fortunes or making love?  Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol.  Come on now, folks, shake a leg.  Let’s have some stunts or a dance or something.”

She did not have another word with Dr. Kennicott until their parting: 

“Been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Milford.  May I see you some time when I come down again?  I’m here quite often—­taking patients to hospitals for majors, and so on.”

“Why——­”

“What’s your address?”

“You can ask Mr. Marbury next time you come down—­if you really want to know!”

“Want to know?  Say, you wait!”

II

Of the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowy block.

They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang phrases and flares of poetry; their silences were contentment, or shaky crises when his arm took her shoulder.  All the beauty of youth, first discovered when it is passing—­and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man encountering a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of her employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she is glad to serve.

They liked each other honestly—­they were both honest.  She was disappointed by his devotion to making money, but she was sure that he did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medical magazines.  What aroused her to something more than liking was his boyishness when they went tramping.