Our old cat’s time had come to go that summer, and I decided that I might relieve it of its existence, at the same time that I could add to my knowledge of comparative anatomy, and give the children in our street some instruction as well. So, improvising a place in our back-yard under the Baldwin apple tree, I started out bravely to chloroform the cat. But its writhings were too much for me; and Sister and our neighbour, Walter, had to take that part off my hands; the rest I did without a qualm, instructing the big-eyed, eager children about the muscles and viscera, and enjoying the amusing questions they asked. CHAPTER IX THE “MEDIC”--_Continued_ Our Caddie’s greeting was a pleasant surprise when we went back to College that second year. Stopping me and beaming on me, she congratulated me warmly on my anatomy paper: “Frankly, Miss Arnold, I was astonished when I learned it was your paper. You seldom did yourself justice in quizzes, it seems.” Even to this graciousness I was so constrained I could only blush and look pleased; but some years later when she visited in the city where I was practising, and I was driving out with her and another woman physician, I confessed my former fear. How she laughed and melted! Then, turning suddenly, she asked in her old manner, “Did you think I would eat you?” For an instant I almost trembled, as in the old days, but her merry smile soon followed. Since then the utmost cordiality has existed between us. The second year in College was the busiest. We had more studies, more instructors, and a more varied life in every way. They lectured us on disease-conditions and on the remedies to be applied. There were the various clinics in the dispensary department--throat clinics, chest clinics, women’s clinics, surgical clinics, children’s clinics, and so on, where, under the various instructors, we were required to examine and diagnose cases and to watch the result of treatment. Patients too ill to come to the clinics were visited in their homes by the senior students, and by the “middlers” after the first half of their second year. Before taking cases, however, we went with the seniors on their visits to get a little familiar with the work. Once on going with a senior to an obstetric case, we found the baby already born, and the cord tied and cut! A half-witted sister of the patient met us at the door; the woman lay on the bed with no sheets on it; the new baby, naked and cold, was crying vigorously; and, playing on the bed beside the mother, was a little five-year-old who had been there through the labour. It seems when the baby came and the patient had told her sister to cut the cord, the sister refusing, the woman had sat up in bed and cut it herself!