For only yesterday Doctor Storm, the family physician, who was in attendance on his wife, ill now for these three weeks past with a combination of heart lesion, kidney poisoning and neuritis, had taken him aside and said very softly and affectionately, as though he were trying to spare his feelings: “To-morrow, Mr. Haymaker, if your wife is no better I will call in my friend, Doctor Grainger, whom you know, for a consultation. He is more of an expert in these matters of the heart”--the heart, Mr. Haymaker had time to note ironically--“than I am. Together we will make a thorough examination, and then I hope we will be better able to say what the possibilities of her recovery really are. It’s been a very trying case, a very stubborn one, I might say. Still, she has a great deal of vitality and is doing as well as could be expected, all things considered. At the same time, though I don’t wish to alarm you unnecessarily--and there is no occasion for great alarm yet--still I feel it my duty to warn you that her condition is very serious indeed. Not that I wish you to feel that she is certain to die. I don’t think she is. Not at all. Just the contrary. She may get well, and probably will, and live all of twenty years more.” (Mentally Mr. Haymaker sighed a purely spiritual sigh.) “She has fine recuperative powers, so far as I can judge, but she has a bad heart, and this kidney trouble has not helped it any. Just now, when her heart should have the least strain, it has the most. “She is just at that point where, as I may say, things are in the balance. A day or two, or three or four at the most, ought to show which way things will go. But, as I have said before, I do not wish to alarm you unnecessarily. We are not nearly at the end of our tether. We haven’t tried blood transfusion yet, and there are several arrows to that bow. Besides, at any moment she may respond more vigorously to medication than she has heretofore--especially in connection with her kidneys. In that case the situation would be greatly relieved at once. “However, as I say, I feel it my duty to speak to you in this way in order that you may be mentally prepared for any event, because in such an odd combination as this the worst may happen at any time. We never can tell. As an old friend of yours and Mrs. Haymaker’s, and knowing how much you two mean to each other”--Mr. Haymaker merely stared at him vacantly--“I feel it my duty to prepare you in this way. We all of us have to face these things. Only last year I lost my dear Matilda, my youngest child, as you know. Just the same, as I say, I have the feeling that Mrs. Haymaker is not really likely to die soon, and that we--Doctor Grainger and myself--will still be able to pull her through. I really do.”