But she said to herself she must remember to repeat the speech about manners to the doctor; it would make him laugh. William laughed easily when he came to the Stuffed Animal House. Indeed, he had laughed when he went away from it, and stopped for a minute at Dr. Lavendar's to tell him that Mrs. Richie was just as anxious as anybody that Sam Wright should attend to his business. "_Business_!" said the doctor, "much she knows about it!" And then he added that he was sure she would do her part to influence the boy to be more industrious. "And you may depend on it, she won't allow any love-making," said William. He laughed again suddenly, out loud, as he ate his supper that night, because some memory of the after-noon came into his head. When Martha, starting at the unusual sound, asked what he was laughing at, he told her he had found Mrs. Richie playing with David Allison. "They were like two children; I said I didn't know which was the younger. They were pretending they were shipwrecked; the swing was the vessel, if you please!" "I suppose she was trying to amuse him," Mrs. King said. "That's a great mistake with children. Give a child a book, or put him down to some useful task; that's my idea." "Oh, she was amusing herself," William explained. Mrs. King was silent. "She gets up for breakfast now, on account of David; it's evidently a great undertaking!" the doctor said humorously. Martha held her lips hard together. "You ought to hear her housekeeping ideas," William rambled on. "I happened to say you wanted some lye for soap. She didn't know soap was made with lye! You would have laughed to hear her--" But at that the leash broke: "_Laughed_? I hope not! I hope I wouldn't laugh because a woman of her age has no more sense than a child. And she gets up for breakfast, does she? Well, why shouldn't she get up for breakfast? I am very tired, but I get up for breakfast. I don't mean to be severe, William, and I never am; I'm only just. But I must say, flatly and frankly, that ignorance and laziness do not seem _funny_ to me. Laugh? Would you laugh if I stayed in bed in the mornings, and didn't know how to make soap, and save your money for you? I guess not!" The doctor's face reddened and he closed his lips with a snap. But Martha found no more fault with Mrs. Richie. After a while she said in that virtuous voice familiar to husbands, "William, I know you don't like to do it, so I cleaned all the medicine-shelves in your office this morning." "Thank you," William said, curtly; and finished his supper in absolute silence. CHAPTER XIII Dr. Lavendar was not sleeping very well that spring. He fell into the habit of waking at about three, just when the birds begin the scattered twittering that swells into full clamor and then dies suddenly into silence. In that gray stillness, broken by bird-calls, he used to occupy himself by thinking of his people.