Then he marched off again. The doctor fell back into a chair, trying to figure it out. Then Ashton and Fosdick and little Jimmie Wellington and Wedgewood strolled in and, dropping into chairs, ordered drinks. Before the doctor could ask anybody to explain, Ashton was launched on a story. His mind was a suitcase full of anecdotes, mostly of the smoking-room order. Wherever three or four men are gathered together, they rapidly organize a clearing-house of off-color stories. The doctor listened in spite of himself, and in spite of himself he was amused, for stories that would be stupid if they were decent, take on a certain verve and thrill from their very forbiddenness. The dear old clergyman felt that it would be priggish to take flight, but he could not make the corners of his mouth behave. Strange twitchings of the lips and little steamy escapes of giggle-jets disturbed him. And when Ashton, who was a practiced raconteur, finished a drolatic adventure with the epilogue, "And the next morning they were at Niagara Falls," the old doctor was helpless with laughter. Some superior force, a devil no doubt, fairly shook him with glee. "Oh, that's bully," he shrieked, "I haven't heard a story like that for ages." "Why, where have you been, Dr. Temple?" asked Ashton, who could not imagine where a man could have concealed himself from such stories. But he laughed loudest of all when the doctor answered: "You see, I live in Ypsilanti. They don't tell me stories like that." "They--who?" said Fosdick. "Why, my pa--my patients," the doctor explained, and laughed so hard that he forgot to feel guilty, laughed so hard that his wife in the next room heard him and giggled to Mrs. Whitcomb: "Listen to dear Walter. He hasn't laughed like that since he was a--a medical student." Then she buried her face guiltily in a book. "Wasn't it good?" Dr. Temple demanded, wiping his streaming eyes and nudging the solemn-faced Englishman, who understood his own nation's humor, but had not yet learned the Yankee quirks. Wedgewood made a hollow effort at laughter and answered: "Extremely--very droll, but what I don't quite get was--why the porter said----" The others drowned him in a roar of laughter, but Ashton was angry. "Why, you blamed fool, that's where the joke came in. Don't you see, the bridegroom said to the bride----" then he lowered his voice and diagrammed the story on his fingers. Mrs. Temple was still shaking with sympathetic laughter, never dreaming what her husband was laughing at. She turned to Mrs. Whitcomb, but Mrs. Whitcomb was still glaring at Mrs. Wellington, who was still writing with flying fingers and underscoring every other word. "Some people seem to think they own the train," Mrs. Whitcomb raged. "That creature has been at the writing desk an hour. The worst of it is, I'm sure she's writing to _my_ husband."