"Catherine," quietly remarked the old lady, "there is nothing so discouraging to a doctor as to find a person who has sent for him out of bed. If the patient is up and about, she mystifies him; he is apt to make mistakes; he loses interest; he wonders if she couldn't come to him, instead of his having to go to her; but when he finds the ailing person in bed, the case is natural and straightforward; he feels at home, and knows how to go to work. If you believe in a doctor, you ought to make him believe in you. And if you are in bed, he will believe in you, and if you are out of it, he is apt not to. More than that, Mrs. Tolbridge, there is no greater compliment that you can pay to a physician you have sent for, than to have him find you in bed." The doctor's wife laughed. She thought, but she did not say so, that probably this old lady had paid her husband a great many compliments. "Well, Miss Panney," she said, rising, "what report shall I make?" The old lady took off her night-cap, and replaced it with her ordinary headgear of lace and ribbons. "Have you heard anything," she asked, "of the young man who is coming to Cobhurst?" "No," said Mrs. Tolbridge, "nothing at all." "Well," continued Miss Panney, "I think the doctor knows something about him through old Butterwood. I have an idea that I know something about him myself, but I wanted to talk to the doctor about him. Of course this is a mere secondary matter. My back has been troubling me a good deal lately, but as the doctor is so pushed, I won't ask him to come here on purpose to see me. If he's in the neighborhood, I shall be very glad to have him call. For the present, I shall try some of the old liniments. Dear knows, I have enough of them, dating back for years and years." "But it will not do to make any mistakes, Miss Panney. Those old prescriptions might not suit you now." "Don't trouble yourself in the least about that," said the old lady, lifting her hand impressively; "medicine never injures me. Not a drop of it do I ever take inside of me, prescription or no prescription. But I don't mind putting things on the outside of me--of course, I mean in reason, for there are outside applications that would ruin the constitution of a jack-screw."