and then they collected a nice fat hundred and fifty dollars.  And probably they’d have charged three hundred, if they hadn’t been afraid of me!  I’m no hog, but I certainly do hate to give old Luke ten dollars’ worth of advice for a dollar and a half, and then see a hundred and fifty go glimmering.  And if I can’t do a better ’pendectomy than either Westlake or McGanum, I’ll eat my hat!”

As she crept into bed she was dazzled by Guy’s blazing grin.  She experimented: 

“But Westlake is cleverer than his son-in-law, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Westlake may be old-fashioned and all that, but he’s got a certain amount of intuition, while McGanum goes into everything bull-headed, and butts his way through like a damn yahoo, and tries to argue his patients into having whatever he diagnoses them as having!  About the best thing Mac can do is to stick to baby-snatching.  He’s just about on a par with this bone-pounding chiropractor female, Mrs. Mattie Gooch.”

“Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, though—­they’re nice.  They’ve been awfully cordial to me.”

“Well, no reason why they shouldn’t be, is there?  Oh, they’re nice enough—­though you can bet your bottom dollar they’re both plugging for their husbands all the time, trying to get the business.  And I don’t know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck.  Still, she’s all right.  It’s Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around all the time.  But I wouldn’t trust any Westlake out of the whole lot, and while Mrs. McGanum seems square enough, you don’t never want to forget that she’s Westlake’s daughter.  You bet!”

“What about Dr. Gould?  Don’t you think he’s worse than either Westlake or McGanum?  He’s so cheap—­drinking, and playing pool, and always smoking cigars in such a cocky way——­”

“That’s all right now!  Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport, but he knows a lot about medicine, and don’t you forget it for one second!”

She stared down Guy’s grin, and asked more cheerfully, “Is he honest, too?”

“Ooooooooooo!  Gosh I’m sleepy!” He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as he complained, “How’s that?  Who?  Terry Gould honest?  Don’t start me laughing—­I’m too nice and sleepy!  I didn’t say he was honest.  I said he had savvy enough to find the index in ‘Gray’s Anatomy,’ which is more than McGanum can do!  But I didn’t say anything about his being honest.  He isn’t.  Terry is crooked as a dog’s hind leg.  He’s done me more than one dirty trick.  He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I wasn’t up-to-date in obstetrics.  Fat lot of good it did him!  She came right in and told me!  And Terry’s lazy.  He’d let a pneumonia patient choke rather than interrupt a poker game.”

“Oh no.  I can’t believe——­”

“Well now, I’m telling you!”