Her husband looked at her in surprise. "You can't 'make' anybody love you, Mary. We are just outsiders to him." She cried out so sharply that he was frightened, not knowing that he had turned a dagger-word in the wound. Perhaps it was the intolerable pain of knowing that she was helpless that drove her one day, without Carl's knowledge, to the rectory. "I'll put it to Doctor Lavendar as--as somebody else's story--the trouble of a 'friend,' and maybe he can tell me how I can make Johnny feel that we are _not_ outsiders! Oh, he owes it to us to do what we want! I'll tell Doctor Lavendar that the father and mother lived out West and are friends of mine. . . . He'll never put two and two together." She walked past the rectory twice before she could get her courage to the point of knocking. When she did, it was Willy King who opened the door. "Oh--is Doctor Lavendar ill?" she said. And Doctor King answered, dryly, that when you are eighty-two you are not particularly well. "I thought I'd just drop in and ask his advice on something--nothing important," said Johnny's mother, breathlessly. "I'll go away, and come some other time." Upon which, from the open window overhead, came a voice: "I won't be wrapped up in cotton batting! Send Mary Robertson upstairs." "Haven't I any rights?" Willy called back, good-naturedly, and Doctor Lavendar retorted: "Maybe you have, but I have many wrongs. Come along, Mary." She went up, saying to herself: "I'll not speak of it. I'll just say I've come to see him." She was so nervous when she entered the room that her breath caught in her throat and she could hardly say, "How do you do?" The old man was in bed with a copy of _Robinson Crusoe_ on the table beside him. He held out a veined and trembling hand: "William's keeping me alive so he can charge me for two calls a day. Well, my dear, what can I do for you?" Mrs. Robertson sat down in a big armchair and said, panting, that--that it was terribly hot. Doctor Lavendar watched her from under his heavy, drooping eyelids. "There was something I was going to ask you about," she said, "but it's no matter. Doctor King says you are sick." "Don't believe all Doctor King tells you." "I just wanted to get advice for--for somebody else. But it's no matter." "Let's hear about the 'somebody else.'" "They are not Old Chester people--so you won't mind if I don't name names?" "Not in the least," said Doctor Lavendar, genially. "Call 'em Smith; that's a somewhat general title."