It was turning dusk when he started on his second round of visits homeward, stopping on the outskirts to rebandage, in one of the tenements, a child's broken arm. He had not returned his footman's salutation that morning, but had carried in his subconsciousness all day this visit to the footman's child. In one manner or another that inconvenient locality had been compassed in his circuit for the past three weeks. From it he passed to his daily ordeal, another rich patient, a nervous wreck, whose primary ailment--the lack of anything to do--had passed into the advanced stages of an inability to do anything, with its sad Nemesis of melancholia--the registered protest of the dying soul. It was a case which took more out of the Doctor than all his day's practice put together; he always came from it in a misery of doubts. The dusk was becoming the dark when he set his foot wearily on the carriage step once more, and with his hand on the carriage door paused suddenly. He was sick of sickness, mortally tired of mortality! For the first time in the whole day he hesitated; an odd, irresolute look came into his face; he pulled out his watch, glanced, and changing his first-given address for another, threw himself back on the cushions with closed eyes. He did not open them again until the carriage, rolling through many streets, came to a halt under some quiet trees, before an apartment-house. There were yellow daffodils between white curtains--very white and high up. As he stepped out, the Doctor glanced involuntarily towards them, and a half-breath of relief escaped him, instantly quenched in a nervous frown and jump as his arm was seized by a firm gloved hand. "Doctor,--this is really _providential_! You are the very person I wished to see!" It was the younger of two heavily upholstered and matronly ladies who spoke, in a voice of many underscorings. The Doctor, who had removed his hat with a purely mechanical motion, knew himself a prey, identified his captor, and eyed her with restrained bitterness. "Doctor,--it is about my Elsie;--she hasn't a particle of color, and she complains of feeling languid all the time--" "No wonder!--What do you expect?"--it was the Doctor's harshest tone. "She is loaded up with flesh,--she doesn't exercise,--you stuff her. Send her out with her hoop,--make her drink water,--stop stuffing her. What she, wants is thinning out." "_Elsie_!--Why, Doctor, the child eats _nothing_,--I have to tempt her all the time;--and when she goes out she complains of feeling tired." "Let her complain,--and let her get tired;--it will do her good. Don't feed her in betweentimes,--and when you do feed her, give her meat--something that will make red blood,--not slops, nor sweets, nor dough. There's nothing in the world the matter with her." He lifted his hat and strode on up the stairs. Maternity, grieved and outraged, stared after him, speechless, then turned for sympathy in the nearest feminine eye.