“Oh!” laughed Doctor Rem. “But, say, I have never made love to a Quaker in my life. However, thanks! I’m willing.” “You are to be nothing but friends, do you hear? I won’t have her mouth turned down instead of up at the corners!” Then, as a woman will, she forthwith tempted him to his destruction: “She’s lovely, John! The very loveliest human being I have ever known! Oh, she and I are old friends. And that is the only reason I permit you and she to become old friends. While you were busy at such nasty things as administering the two parts of a seidlitz powder so that ebullition would take place in the stomach of the poor person at your college dispensary, I was making love to the little Quaker—who would have preferred a man.” “Of course,” said John Rem. “Oh, not ‘of course.’ But if you were not what you are, I would let you try to interest her. Nothing would please me better.” “And, her—be hanged!” cried the young physician, with enthusiasm. “If you were not what you are—a brute.” “Yes—she’s a Quaker,” sighed John Rem, regretting for the first time his stormy life. Bell-Bell, as a woman will, veered the moment he had come to her point of view. “She is a woman, John, dear, and sometimes a woman likes that in a man—if it is honest—as yours is. Now run away. I have been indiscreet. And married six years, too. Go!” IV THE FIDDLING OF FORTUNE Fortune fiddled favorably for the young physician. The next day it rained, and as he was leisurely getting down from the uptown train, a little exclamation arrested him, and, withal, two hands were planted in the middle of his back and clutched there wildly. Turning quickly John Rem looked again into the calyxlike bonnet. It was plain that even in the distress of her accident she had recognized him, as well as that she meant to be haughty—in a Quakerish way. She did decline his assistance. But it was really at such moments as this that what was finest in Rem came out. “You are injured,” he said, with gravity and strength, “and I must help you. I am a doctor.” Without more ado he carried her to the women’s room in the station, and with the help of the matron attended to her injury—which was slight. However, she was glad to lean on his arm as he led her to the street car which she insisted upon taking to Bell-Bell’s, and while this had happened to him often before, he did not remember that he had had such interest in the proceeding. While she, when he had left her alone in the car, shook her head at herself accusingly, as she said: “Entirely too glad—entirely—to be carried!” And she turned and watched him stalk away.