“Does life,” Annie was asking, at the end of half an hour, “seem more simple or more complicated as you live on? That sounds awfully abstruse, doesn't it? And I don't know why I'm always asking you abstruse things, but I am.” “Oh, I don't mind it,” said the doctor. “Perhaps I haven't lived on long enough to answer this particular question; I'm only thirty-six, you know.” “_Only_? I'm thirty-one, and I feel a hundred!” she broke in. “You don't look it. But I believe I rather like abstruse questions. You know Putney and I have discussed a great many. But just what do you mean by this particular abstraction?” He took from the table a large ivory paper-knife which he was in the habit of playing with in his visits, and laid first one side and then the other side of its smooth cool blade in the palm of his left hand, as he leaned forward, with his elbows on his knees, and bent his smiling eyes keenly upon her. She stopped rocking herself, and said imperatively, “Will you please put that back, Dr. Morrell?” “This paper-knife?” “Yes. And not look at me just in that way? When you get that knife and that look, I feel a little too much as if you were diagnosing me.” “Diagnosticating,” suggested the doctor. “Is it? I always supposed it was diagnosing. But it doesn't matter. It wasn't the name I was objecting to.” He put the knife back and changed his posture, with a smile that left nothing of professional scrutiny in his look. “Very well, then; you shall diagnose yourself.” “Diagnosticate, please.” “Oh, I thought you preferred the other.” “No, it sounds undignified, now that I know there's a larger word. Where was I?” “The personal bearing of the question whether life isn't more and more complicated?” “How did you know it had a personal bearing?” “I suspected as much.” “Yes, it has. I mean that within the last four or five months--since I've been in Hatboro'--I seem to have lost my old point of view; or, rather, I don't find it satisfactory any more. I'm ashamed to think of the simple plans, or dreams, that I came home with. I hardly remember what they were; but I must have expected to be a sort of Lady Bountiful here; and now I think a Lady Bountiful one of the most mischievous persons that could infest any community.” “You don't mean that charity is played out?” asked the doctor. “In the old-fashioned way, yes.” “But they say poverty is on the increase. What is to be done?” “Justice,” said Annie. “Those who do most of the work in the world ought to share in its comforts as a right, and not be put off with what we idlers have a mind to give them from our superfluity as a grace.” “Yes, that's all very true. But what till justice _is_ done?”