She turned away, adding without glancing back as she left the room: "I do wish, Ross, that you'd get out and exercise more. You would conquer Gray's 'Anatomy'--and all other difficulties--more quickly if you would." "I guess you're right, Aunt Anne," assented Ross. "Yes," scolded Aunt Anne to her sister in the living-room--but the scolding rested on a very apparent foundation of love--"Ross always agrees with me about taking vigorous exercise--and then never takes it. Now watch him walk, will you?" she fretted, looking out of the window. Her sister, busily sewing, paused with suspended needle, and glanced out. Ross was going slowly down the drive, his head bent forward, his youthful shoulders carelessly sagging, his long arms aimlessly hanging, giving him a curiously helpless appearance at variance with his large frame. "It's Ross's own fault," declared Aunt Anne. "He doesn't like to exert himself physically. Not that he's lazy," defensively, "for he isn't. He would work all night over a patient, and never think of himself; but to get out and exercise for the sake of exercising, and straightening himself up, and holding himself, somehow--well, I've talked myself hoarse about it, and then found that he had been reading some medical book or other all the time I was talking!" Here Aunt Anne laughed silently, and ran her shears through a length of gingham, adding, as if the addition were a logical sequence to her monologue: "It's a mystery to me how his father can feel so disappointed in him." "Disappointed in Ross?" exclaimed the sister in a tone of wonder. Mrs. Grant nodded. "His father sends for him once a year, sees him for a day or two when Ross is at the greatest disadvantage in unaccustomed surroundings--you know the stepmother is a woman of fashion; and the result is that he is so awkward and slow and tongue-tied that his father--well," Mrs. Grant bit off her thread energetically, "of course, we feel tender on the subject because we have had Ross now for seven years, and we think a better boy never lived. But now the time has come," her voice trembled, "when we must give him up." "Will his father forbid his going to medical college?" asked the sister. Mrs. Grant hesitated. "No, I don't think he will forbid it; but he will prevent it--if he is able," she added significantly. Two days later the summons from Ross Grant, Senior, arrived in the shape of a telegram brief and to the point. "Take night-train," it read, "September first. Reach office at nine." "Ross," worried Aunt Anne as she straightened his tie and hovered around him anxiously the afternoon of September first, "you'd better get a new hat in Scranton. This one is--well, I think you better appear before Mrs. Grant in a new one." "All right, aunt." Dr. Grant extended his hand, and gripped Ross's. "Remember, my boy, that the telegram appointed nine A. M. as the time for your appearing."