Schulze, with proper equipment, redressed and rebandaged the wound, and left, after cautioning the young man not to move the sick arm. "You'll be all right to strum the guitar and sport a diamond ring in a fortnight at the outside," said he. At the door he lectured Adelaide: "For God's sake, Miss Ranger, don't let his mother coddle him. He's got the makings of a man like his father--not as big, perhaps, but still a lot of a man. Give him a chance! Give him a chance! If this had happened in a football game or a fox-hunt, nobody would have thought anything of it. But just because it was done at useful work, you've got yourself all fixed to make a fearful to-do." How absurdly does practice limp along, far behind firm-striding theory! Schulze came twice that day, looked in twice the next day, and fussed like a disturbed setting-hen when his patient forestalled the next day's visit by appearing at his office for treatment. "I want to see if I can't heal that cut without a scar," was his explanation--but it was a mere excuse. When Arthur called on the fifth day, Schulze's elder daughter, Madelene, opened the door. "Will you please tell the doctor," said he, "that the workman who cut his finger at the cooperage wishes to see him?" Madelene's dark gray eyes twinkled. She was a tall and, so he thought, rather severe-looking young woman; her jet black hair was simply, yet not without a suspicion of coquetry, drawn back over her ears from a central part--or what would have been a part had her hair been less thick. She was studying medicine under her father. It was the first time he had seen her, it so happened, since she was in knee dresses at public school. As he looked he thought: "A splendid advertisement for the old man's business." Just why she seemed so much healthier than even the healthiest, he found it hard to understand. She was neither robust nor radiant. Perhaps it was the singular clearness of her dead-white skin and of the whites of her eyes; again it might have been the deep crimson of her lips and of the inside of her mouth--a wide mouth with two perfect rows of small, strong teeth of the kind that go with intense vitality. "Just wait here," said she, in a businesslike tone, as she indicated the reception room. "You don't remember me?" said Arthur, to detain her. "No, I don't _remember_ you," replied Madelene. "But I know who you are." "Who I _was_," thought Arthur, his fall never far from the foreground of his mind. "You used to be very serious, and always perfect in your lessons," he continued aloud, "and--most superior." Madelene laughed. "I was a silly little prig," said she. Then, not without a subtle hint of sarcasm, "But I suppose we all go through that period--some of us in childhood, others further along." Arthur smiled, with embarrassment. So he had the reputation of being a prig.