“As a matter of fact, I do!  And I make ’em like it.  Score two!” But his chuckle was not so rotund, and he was very attentive to the ammeter.

In a moment he was cautiously attacking:  “That’s a wonderful boy, Will Kennicott.  Great work these country practitioners are doing.  The other day, in Washington, I was talking to a big scientific shark, a professor in Johns Hopkins medical school, and he was saying that no one has ever sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the sympathy and help he gives folks.  These crack specialists, the young scientific fellows, they’re so cocksure and so wrapped up in their laboratories that they miss the human element.  Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable human being would waste his time having, it’s the old doc that keeps a community well, mind and body.  And strikes me that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter practitioners I’ve ever met.  Eh?”

“I’m sure he is.  He’s a servant of reality.”

“Come again?  Um.  Yes.  All of that, whatever that is. . . .  Say, child, you don’t care a whole lot for Gopher Prairie, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Nope.”

“There’s where you’re missing a big chance.  There’s nothing to these cities.  Believe me, I know!  This is a good town, as they go.  You’re lucky to be here.  I wish I could shy on!”

“Very well, why don’t you?”

“Huh?  Why—­Lord—­can’t get away fr——­”

“You don’t have to stay.  I do!  So I want to change it.  Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns and native states are perfect?  It’s you who encourage the denizens not to change.  They quote you, and go on believing that they live in paradise, and——­” She clenched her fist.  “The incredible dullness of it!”

“Suppose you were right.  Even so, don’t you think you waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town?  Kind of mean!”

“I tell you it’s dull.  Dull!”

“The folks don’t find it dull.  These couples like the Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards——­”

“They don’t.  They’re bored.  Almost every one here is.  Vacuousness and bad manners and spiteful gossip—­that’s what I hate.”

“Those things—­course they’re here.  So are they in Boston!  And every place else!  Why, the faults you find in this town are simply human nature, and never will be changed.”

“Perhaps.  But in a Boston all the good Carols (I’ll admit I have no faults) can find one another and play.  But here—­I’m alone, in a stale pool—­except as it’s stirred by the great Mr. Bresnahan!”

“My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow ’d think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call ’em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it’s a wonder they don’t all up and commit suicide.  But they seem to struggle along somehow!”

“They don’t know what they miss.  And anybody can endure anything.  Look at men in mines and in prisons.”