"Then why don't you go to some doctor who would attend to you more quickly?" she pursued, moved chiefly by the desire to see what would happen. The woman stared, grew red, and replied frigidly: "Because I do not wish to." All the other patients were staring at Ernestine, too. "Why don't you do that yourself?" asked a large woman with a sick-looking small boy. "I guess if there was anything much the matter with you, you'd be willing to wait," said a pale woman with a weary voice. And then a man--she was sure that man was a victim of cancer--said loftily: "A doctor you never have to wait for isn't the doctor you want." "The only thing seems queer to me," said a meek looking woman, taking advantage of the outbreak, "is that he don't look at your tongue. Down in Indiana, where I come from, they always look at your tongue. There's a lot of questions he don't ask," she ventured, looking around for either assent or information. "He asks all there's any need of," the first woman assured her. "I guess _you_ aren't very sick," turning, witheringly, to Ernestine. And then they went back to their waiting; those who had rocking chairs rocking, those who had magazines reading, or turning leaves at least, some just sitting there and looking into space. It must take away all sense of freedom to feel that people like this, sick people for whom everything was hard, were always waiting for one. She would tell the doctor how she had been well-nigh mobbed by loyal patients. They were like a great family; she knew well enough they did considerable grumbling, but her remark put her without the fold, and from her as an alien, criticism was not to be brooked. By the glare with which the first woman still regarded her she was sure she was suspected of being an agent sent there by some inferior doctor to try and get Dr. Parkman's patients away from him. Ernestine was tired, and she believed she would have to admit that she was nervous. She had been working harder, she supposed, than she should, but the further she went the more she saw to do, and something from within was eternally pushing her on.