The Old Doctor had been very stingy with his house and his books and his knowledge and his patients. It was natural perhaps under the professional circumstances of waning Age and waxing Youth. Yet the fact remained. Never before in five years of village association had the Young Doctor crossed the threshold of the Old Doctor's home, yet now he came and went like the Man of the House. Here he sat at this instant in the Old Doctor's private study, in the Old Doctor's chair, his feet upon the Old Doctor's table, and the whole great room with its tier after tier of bookcases, and its drawer after drawer of probable memoranda _free_ before him. He could imagine the Old Doctor's impotent wrath over such a contingency, yet he felt no sentimental mawkishness over his own position. As far as he knew the Dead were dead. Sitting there in the Old Doctor's study, he conjured up scene after scene of the Old Doctor's irascibility and exclusiveness. Even as late as the Sick-A-Bed Lady's arrival, the Old Doctor had snubbed him unmercifully before a crowd of people. It was at the station when the little sick stranger was being taken off the car and put into a carriage, and the Old Doctor had hailed the Younger with unwonted friendliness. "I've got a case in there that would make you famous if you could master it," he said. The Young Doctor remembered perfectly how he had walked into the trap. "What is it?" he had cried eagerly. "That's none of your business," chuckled the Old Doctor, and drove away with all the platform loafers shouting with delight. Well, it seemed to be the Young Doctor's business _now_, and he got up, turned the lamp higher and began to hunt through the Old Doctor's rarest books for some light on certain curious developments in the Sick-A-Bed Lady's case. He was just in the midst of this hunt when the Old Housekeeper glided in like a ghost and startled him. "Sit down," he said absent-mindedly, and went on with his reading. He had almost forgotten her presence when she coughed and said: "Excuse me, sir, but I've something very special to say to you." The Young Doctor looked up in surprise and saw that the Woman's face was ashy white. "I--don't--think--you quite--understand the case," she stammered. "I think the little lady upstairs is going to be a Mother!" The Young Doctor put his hand up to his face, and his face felt like parchment. He put his hand down to the book again, and the book cover quivered like flesh. "What do you m-e-a-n?" he asked. "I'll tell you what I mean," said the Old Housekeeper, and led him back to the sick room. Two hours later the Young Doctor staggered into his Best Friend's house clutching a sheet of letter paper in his hand. His shoulders dragged as though under a pack, and every trace of boyishness was wrung like a rag out of his face. "For Heaven's sake, what's the matter?" cried his friend, starting up. "Nothing," muttered the Young Doctor, "except the Sick-A-Bed Lady."