He thought that if it should snow heavily enough he would use the sleigh when he started out in the afternoon. There were several sick children to visit on opposite horizons of his neighborhood. The sound of the bells as he drove in at their front gates might have value: it would not only mean the coming of his sleigh, but it would suggest to them the approach of that mysterious Sleigh of the World which that night they were expecting. Afterwards he was to go to a distant county seat for a consultation. His road home was a straight turnpike: it would be late when he returned, perhaps far in the night; and he would have the sound of the bells to himself--the bells and his thoughts and Christmas Eve. This plan of Dr. Birney's regarding the children laid bare one of his ideas as a physician. For years he had employed increasingly in his practice the power of suggestion. For years life as he sometimes surmised had employed the power of suggestion on him. He felt assured that in treating the sick there are cases where every suggestion of happiness that can reach a patient draws him back toward life: every suggestion of unhappiness lowers his vitality and helps to roll him over the precipice: the final push need be a very slight one. The melody of sleighbells falling on the ears of the sick children that afternoon might have the weight of a sunbeam on delicate scales and tip the balances as he wished: he believed that many a time the weight of a mental sunbeam was all that was needed to decide the issue. He looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock, and dinner was served at one, and he had a tranquil outlook for three hours of work. The only remaining source from which an interruption could have reached him was his wife. His wife!--his wife never--intruded. Not three hours, but two hours and a half, to be exact; for the dining-room adjoined his library, and every day at half past twelve o'clock his wife entered the dining-room to superintend final preparations for dinner: from the instant of her entrance concentration of mind ended for him: he occupied himself with things less important and with odds and ends for mind and body. She would draw the shades of the windows delicately to temper the light according as the day was cloudy or cloudless; she would bring fresh flowers for the table; she would inspect the clearness of the cut glass, the brightness of the silver, the snowiness of the napkins; she would prepare at the sideboard a salad, a sauce; she would give a final push to the chairs--last of all a straightening push to his. All the lower drudgery of the servants and all the higher domestic triumphs of her skill led to his chair--as to a kind of throne where the function of feeding reigned. With that final adjustment of the piece of furniture in which his body was to be at ease while it gorged itself, with that act of grade, the doors were opened; dinner was announced; he walked in, and faced his wife, and dined--with Nemesis.