“No, but I want to look at the thoughts inside your head,” he explained mysteriously. With entire confidence the child opened her mouth as wide as possible, and Dr. Strong, setting the instrument far back against her tongue, applied his eye to the other end. “All right, Toots,” he said, after a moment. “Get your breath, and then let mother look.” He showed Mrs. Clyde how to press the tiny button setting aglow an electric lamp and lighting up the nasal passages above the throat, which were reflected on a mirror within the contrivance and thus made clear to the eye. Following his instructions, she set her eye to the miniature telescope as the physician pressed it against the little tongue. “Well, Betty,” said Dr. Strong, as the implement was again withdrawn, “you’ve got very nice thoughts inside that wise little head of yours. Now you can continue bringing up your doll in the way she should go.” As the door closed behind her the mother turned to Dr. Strong. “Is she going to be deaf?” she asked breathlessly. “Of course not,” he reassured her. “That will be taken care of. What did you see above the back of the throat?” “Little things like tiny stalactites hanging down.” “Adenoids.” “Where could she have gotten adenoids?” cried Mrs. Clyde. “From her remotest imaginable ancestor, probably.” “Why, aren’t they a disease?” “No. An inheritance. The race has always had them. Probably they’re vestigial salivary glands, the use of which we’ve outgrown. Unfortunately they may overdevelop and block up the air-passages. Then they have to come out.” For the first time in the conference Grandma Sharpless gathered force and speech. “Young man,” she said solemnly—rather accusingly, in fact—“if the Lord put adenoids in the human nose he put ‘em there for some purpose.” “Doubtless. But that purpose, whatever it may have been, no longer exists.” “Everything in the human body has some use,” she persisted. “Had,” corrected Dr. Strong. “Not has. How about your appendix?” Mrs. Sharpless’s appendix, like the wicked, had long since ceased from troubling, and was now at rest in alcohol in a doctor’s office, having, previous to the change of location, given its original proprietress the one bad scare of her life. Therefore, she blinked, not being provided with a ready answer. “The ancestors of man,” said Dr. Strong, “were endowed with sundry organs, like the appendix and the adenoids, which civilized man is better off without. And, as civilized man possesses a God-given intelligence to tell him how to get rid of them, he wisely does so when it’s necessary.” “What have the adenoids to do with Betty’s deafness?” asked Mr. Clyde.