The Doctor gave his deep, rumbling chuckle. "So much the better, Pat. I don't feel professional anyway." He moved into the living room, depositing his bulk on a groaning davenport. "And how's yourself?" "Too well to be a patient of yours," retorted the girl. "Psychiatry! The new religion! Just between friends, it's all applesauce, isn't it?" "If I weren't trying to act in place of your father, I'd resent that, young lady," said the Doctor placidly. "Psychiatry is a definite science, and a pretty important one. Applied psychology, the science of the human mind." "If said mind exists," added the girl, swinging her slim legs over the arm of a chair. "Correct," agreed the Doctor. "In my practice I find occasional evidence that it does. Or did; your generation seems to have found substitutes." "Which appears to work just as well!" laughed Pat. "All our troubles are more or less inherited from your generation." "Touche!" admitted Dr. Horker. "But my generation also bequeathed you some solid values which you don't know how to use." "They've been weighed and found wanting," said Pat airily. "We're busy replacing them with our own values." "Which are certainly no better." "Maybe not, Doc, but at least they're ours." "Yours and Tom Paine's. I can't see that you young moderns have brought any new ideas to the social scheme." "New or not, we're the first ones to give 'em a try-out. Your crowd took it out in talk." "That's an insult," observed the Doctor cheerfully. "If I weren't acting _in loco parentis_--" "I know! You'd give me a few licks in the spot popularly supposed to do the most good! Well, that's part of a parent's privilege, isn't it?" "You've grown beyond the spanking age, my dear. Physically, if not mentally--though I don't say the process would hurt me as much as you. I'd doubtless enjoy it." "Then you might try sending me to bed without my dinner," the girl laughed. "That's a doctor's prerogative, Pat. I've even done that to your Mother." "In other words, you're a complete flop as a parent. All the responsibilities, and none of the privileges." "That expresses it." "Well, you elected yourself, Doc. It's not my fault you happened to live next door." "No. It's my misfortune." "And I notice," remarked Pat wickedly, "that you're not too thoroughly _in loco_ to neglect sending Mother a bill for services rendered!" "My dear girl, that's part of the treatment!" "So? And how?" "I furnish a bill just steep enough to keep your mother from indulging too frequently in medical services. Without that little practical check on her inclinations, she'd be a confirmed neurotic. One of those sweet, resigned, professional invalids, you know." "Then why not send her a bill tall enough to cure her altogether?" "She might change to psychoanalysis or New Thought," chuckled the Doctor. "Besides, your father wanted me to look after her, and besides that, I like having the run of the house."