“He’s forgotten me,” chuckled the Mayor, “but I haven’t forgotten him. Fifteen years ago he came along here horse-doctoring and poisoned a perfectly good mare for me. He won’t try to poison this town again in a hurry. You finished him, Mrs. Sharpless, you and Dr. Strong.” “What _I_ want to know,” said the Health Master, “is how poor old Mr. Huddleston feels about that contribution, now.” A month later he found out. Traveling by trolley one evening, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to face Professor Graham Gray. “No hard feelings, I hope,” said the quack with superb urbanity. “All in the way of business, I take it. I’d have done the same to you, if you’d come butting in on my trade. Say, but that old lady was a Tartar! She cooked my goose in Bairdstown. For all that, I got an unsolicited testimonial from there two weeks ago that’s a wonder. Anonymous, too. Not a word of writing with it to tell who the grateful patient might be.” “What was it?” asked Dr. Strong with polite interest. “A twenty-dollar bill. Now, _what_ do you think of that?” When Dr. Strong spoke again—and the Great Gray Benefactor has always regarded this as the most inconsequential reply he ever received to a plain question—it was after a long and thoughtful pause. “I think,” said he with conviction, “that I’ll start in going to church again, next Sunday.” X. THE HOUSE THAT CAUGHT COLD “Can you cure a cold?” asked Grandma Sharpless. A flare from the soft-coal fire flickered across the library, revealing a smile on the Health Master’s face. “Am I a millionaire?” he countered. “Not from your salary as Chinese physician to the Clydes,” laughed the head of that family. “If I could cure a cold, I should be, easily, more than that. I’d be the foremost medical discoverer of the day.” “Then you can’t cure a cold,” pursued Mrs. Sharpless. “What _is_ a cold?” countered the Health Master in that insinuating tone of voice which he employed to provoke the old lady into one of those frequent verbal encounters so thoroughly enjoyed by both of them. “An ordinary common cold in the head. You know what I mean perfectly well, young man. The kind you catch by getting into drafts.” “Oh, _that!_ Well, you see, there’s no such thing.” “No such thing as a cold in the head, Dr. Strong?” said Julia, looking up from her book. “Why, we’ve all had ‘em, loads of times.” “And Bettina is coming down with one now, if I’m any judge,” said Mrs. Sharpless. “She’s had the sniffles all day.” “Let’s hope it isn’t a cold. Maybe it’s only chicken-pox or mumps.” “Are you wishing chicken-pox and mumps on my baby?” cried Mrs. Clyde. In the three years during which Dr. Strong had been the “Chinese physician” of the household, earning his salary by keeping his patients well instead of curing them when ill, Mrs. Clyde had never quite learned to guard against the surprises which so often pointed the Health Master’s truths. “Not by any means; I’m only hoping for the lesser of evils.”