As when a sunbeam bursts through heavy black clouds, so did a light flash over her face and into her eyes as I said these words; but in a moment it darkened down again as she began to think of all the objections to such a plan. But the idea was born; it grew; and with my vivid power of imagination, I overthrew all her objections one after another, until her conversation became really animated, and the plan appeared so plausible to both of us that the good woman went out of the office with no stronger tonic than hope and courage can bestow. The whole affair was forgotten by me in the pressure of business and in listening to more stories of moral and physical misery. The summer with all its joy and beauty slipped away, and brilliant October brought a new flood of professional business and cares. On one of these autumn days, a plump, sunburnt, cheerful-faced woman entered my sanctum, holding in one hand a huge bouquet of gorgeous dahlias, in the other a little jar of cream, and on her arm hung a small basket with a dozen fresh eggs. “Don’t you remember me?” she said. Of course I did not, although the voice was familiar. “Well, I am Mrs. F----, whom you advised to nurse her cow.” I could hardly believe my eyes, even after her repeated assurances of her identity with that miserable wreck of the May before. She gave me an animated description of what followed her leaving my office; of all her doubts and misgivings during her journey home as to what her husband would say to such a proposition for both a sick wife and a sick cow; and of how she had timidly introduced the subject to him by telling him that I was a queer doctor who did not believe much in medicine. All this prepared him for the account of my plan to which contrary to his usual habit when women proposed anything, he listened gravely, and then said thoughtfully, “Well, my dear, we might try it.” She at once called in the charwoman who had supplied her place that day and made arrangements with her to come daily. The next morning she went to the field, with her rubber waterproof, her husband and the cow. The latter was tied to a stake, and my patient seated herself near on the waterproof (as I had suggested to her) while she watched the cow and petted and talked to her. The two took kindly to each other. One day’s experiment proved that she could keep the cow in such subjection and quietness as the surgeon had ordered, plucking the fresh grass for her and feeding her as needed. All went well. Let me give a part of her story in her own words: