“Good-morning, madam,” he said with a cheerful note. He was propitiated by a certain up-all-night aspect in the three feminine members of the household, which his discerning eye could well distinguish from the activity of the habitual early riser. It implied due anxiety and attention to any possible or probable want of his patient. He had scant interest in people whose lungs, liver, heart, and stomach were in a normal condition. They were merely unindividualized cumberers of the ground, except as they ministered to that genus whom he sought to exalt into a tyrant of absolute sway, his patient. He himself bowed down before it with an unswerving devotion and an unchanging assiduity, despite its protean aspect, whether it were only two feet long, and writhing with the colic, or as big as Eli Strobe, with a dignified fracture of the skull; and he saw to it that every possible knee was also crooked in subservience. It was a favorite formula with him, “If my patient can’t sleep, not a soul in the house shall bat an eye all night.” And thus there were always powders or drops to be administered with appalling frequency, if the sufferer should chance to awake. Therefore he looked with approving eyes at Mrs. Strobe, and dismissed as gratuitous certain anxieties that had harassed him since parting from her yesterday, because of her earnest advocacy of “yerb tea,” and her evident reluctance to defer to his judgment. “How’s my patient, madam?” he asked, as he lumbered up the steps. He was not, properly speaking, a fat man; he might better be described as merely ample. He was not muscular; he seemed flabbily large. His face had sundry deep dimples, visible even when not smiling, and he had a fair, fresh complexion, and was close-shaven. He was perhaps some sixty years old, and he was ostentatious in the use of his spectacles, after the manner of one who regards age as a sort of gradual promotion. He was quite bald, and wore a dark wig, or what is known as a “scratch.” It hardly served any purpose of deception, for often he thrust it far back on his head, showing his broad, full-fronted brow; and sometimes, in his office, on a warm day, he hung it on the door-knob or the back of a chair, contracting thereby many an influenza and neuralgia, which he would have considered of serious interest had it been the choice possession of one of his patients. “Not awake yet?” he said, glancing at the pillow as he entered. He sat down beside the bed, and, motioning to Marcella to open the shutter, he adjusted his spectacles, and bent forward to scrutinize the sleeping face. Mrs. Strobe, secretly scornful as she watched him, was amazed to see him draw back, with an expression of doubting surprise, and with his soft, deft fingers feel the pulse of the wounded man. His eyes with a suspicious gleam sought hers. “How did he spend the night?” he asked curtly. “Waal,” cautiously admitted Mrs. Strobe, “the fust o’ the night he war sorter rampagious. Arter that he slept.”