“Yes, I have money. But I don’t go after it. It comes to me, because I seek and render service for the service’s sake. It will come to anybody else the same way; and why should it come any other way?” He not only had a low regard for the motives of most seekers of wealth, he went further, and fell into much disbelief of poor men’s needs. For instance, he looked upon a man’s inability to find employment, or upon a poor fellow’s run of bad luck, as upon the placarded woes of a hurdy-gurdy beggar. “If he wants work he will find it. As for begging, it ought to be easier for any true man to starve than to beg.” The sentiment was ungentle, but it came from the bottom of his belief concerning himself, and a longing for moral greatness in all men. “However,” he would add, thrusting his hand into his pocket and bringing out his purse, “I’ll help any man to make himself useful. And the sick――well, the sick, as a matter of course. Only I must know what I’m doing.” Have some of us known want? To have known her――though to love her was impossible――is “a liberal education.” The Doctor was learned; but this acquaintanceship, this education, he had never got. Hence his untenderness. Shall we condemn the fault? Yes. And the man? We have not the face. To be _just_, which he never knowingly failed to be, and at the same time to feel tenderly for the unworthy, to deal kindly with the erring――it is a double grace that hangs not always in easy reach even of the tallest. The Doctor attained to it――but in later years; meantime, this story――which, I believe, had he ever been poor would never have been written. He had barely disposed of the three or four waiting messengers that arose from their chairs against the corridor wall, and was still reading the anxious lines left in various handwritings on his slate, when the young man entered. He was of fair height, slenderly built, with soft auburn hair, a little untrimmed, neat dress, and a diffident, yet expectant and courageous, face. “Dr. Sevier?” “Yes, sir.” “Doctor, my wife is very ill; can I get you to come at once and see her?” “Who is her physician?” “I have not called any; but we must have one now.” “I don’t know about going at once. This is my hour for being in the office. How far is it, and what’s the trouble?” “We are only three squares away, just here in Custom-house Street.” The speaker began to add a faltering enumeration of some very grave symptoms. The Doctor noticed that he was slightly deaf; he uttered his words as though he did not hear them. “Yes,” interrupted Dr. Sevier, speaking half to himself as he turned around to a standing case of cruel-looking silver-plated things on shelves; “that’s a small part of the penalty women pay for the doubtful honor of being our mothers. I’ll go. What is your number? But you had better drive back with me if you can.” He drew back from the glass case, shut the door, and took his hat. “Narcisse!”