Still the farmer came not, nor the market–gardener. Dr. Tibbitt began to believe that he had chosen a meadow that was _too_ secluded. At last two boys appeared. After they had stared at him and at Zenobia for half–an–hour, one of them agreed to produce Dr. Pettengill and Zenobia’s keeper for fifty cents. Dr. Pettengill was the first to arrive. He refused to come nearer than the furthest limit of the pasture. “Hello, Doctor,” he called out, “hear you’ve been seeing elephants. Want me to take your cases? Guess I can. Got a half–hour free. Brought some bromide down for you, if you’d like to try it.” To judge from his face, Zenobia was invisible. But his presence alarmed that sensitive animal. She crowded up close to the fence, and every time she flicked her skin to shake off the flies she endangered the equilibrium of the Doctor, who was sitting on the top rail, for dignity’s sake. He shouted his directions to his colleague, who shouted back professional criticisms. [Illustration] “Salicylate of soda for that old woman? What’s the matter with salicylate of cinchonidia? Don’t want to kill her before you get out of this swamp, do you?” Dr. Tibbitt was not a profane man; but at this moment he could not restrain himself. “_Damn you!_” he said, with such vigor that the elephant gave a convulsive start. The Doctor felt his seat depart from under him—he was going—going into space for a brief moment, and then he scrambled up out of the soft mud of the cow–wallow back of the fence on which he had been sitting. Zenobia had backed against the fence. The keeper arrived soon after. He had only reached the meadow when Zenobia lifted her trunk in the air, emitted a mirthful toot, and struck out for the woods with the picturesque and cumbersome gallop of a mastodon pup. “Dern _you_,” said the keeper to Dr. Tibbitt, who was trying to fasten his collar, which had broken loose in his fall; “if the boys was here, and I hollered ‘Hey Rube!’—there wouldn’t be enough left of yer to spread a plaster fer a baby’s bile!” The Doctor made himself look as decent as the situation allowed, and then he marched toward the town with the light of a firm resolve illuminating his face. The literature of his childhood had come to his aid. He remembered the unkind tailor who pricked the elephant’s trunk. It seemed to him that the tailor was a rather good fellow. “If that elephant’s disease is gratitude,” thought the Doctor, “I’ll give her an antidote.” He went to the drug–store, and, as he went, he pulled out a blank pad and wrote down a prescription, from mere force of habit. It read thus: [Illustration: PESSELS & MORTON, DRUGGISTS, _Commercial Block, Main Street, Sagawaug._ [Index]PRESCRIPTIONS CAREFULLY COMPOUNDED.[Index] [Rx symbol] Calcium sul 3g ij Calcium chl 3g xrj Capsicum pulv 3g zi sig. Take at once. Tibbitt] When the druggist looked at it, he was taken short of breath. “What’s this?” he asked—“a bombshell?”