“Oh, then I might agree with you on some points. But I shouldn't say such things to my patients, Miss Kilburn.” “It would be a great comfort to them if you did,” she sighed. The doctor broke out in a laugh of delight at her perfervid concentration. “Oh, no, no! They're mostly nervous women, and it would be the death of them--if they understood me. In fact, what's the use of brooding upon such ideas? We can't hurry any change, but we can make ourselves uncomfortable.” “Why should I be comfortable?” she asked, with a solemnity that made him laugh again. “Why shouldn't you be?” “Yes, that's what I often ask myself. But I can't be,” she said sadly. They had risen, and he looked at her with his professional interest now openly dominant, as he stood holding her hand. “I'm going to send you a little more of that tonic, Miss Kilburn.” She pulled her hand away. “No, I shall not take any more medicine. You think everything is physical. Why don't you ask at once to see my tongue?” He went out laughing, and she stood looking wistfully at the door he had passed through. XXV. The bell on the orthodox church called the members of Mr. Peck's society together for the business meeting with the same plangent, lacerant note that summoned them to worship on Sundays. Among those who crowded the house were many who had not been there before, and seldom in any place of the kind. There were admirers of Putney: workmen of rebellious repute and of advanced opinions on social and religious questions; nonsuited plaintiffs and defendants of shady record, for whom he had at one time or another done what he could. A good number of the summer folk from South Hatboro' were present, with the expectation of something dramatic, which every one felt, and every one hid with the discipline that subdues the outside of life in a New England town to a decorous passivity. At the appointed time Mr. Peck rose to open the meeting with prayer; then, as if nothing unusual were likely to come before it, he declared it ready to proceed to business. Some people who had been gathering in the vestibule during his prayer came in; and the electric globes, which had been recently hung above the pulpit and on the front of the gallery in substitution of the old gas chandelier, shed their moony glare upon a house in which few places were vacant. Mr. Gerrish, sitting erect and solemn beside his wife in their pew, shared with the minister and Putney the tacit interest of the audience. He permitted the transaction of several minor affairs, and Mr. Peck, as Moderator, conducted the business with his habitual exactness and effect of far-off impersonality. The people waited with exemplary patience, and Putney, who lounged in one corner of his pew, gave no more sign of excitement, with his chin sunk in his rumpled shirt-front, than his sad-faced wife at the other end of the seat.