The old rail fence and the blackberry briars hugging it here and there in clumps; small clusters of the golden-rod, even now a pale yellow, which by and by would glorify all the country lanes; the hazel bushes laden with their delightful promise for the autumn--Mary noted them all. They passed unchallenged those wayside sentinels, the tall mullein-stalks. The Venus Looking-Glass nodded its blue head ever so gently as the brown eyes fell upon it and then they went a little way ahead to where the blossoms of the elderberry were turning into tiny globules of green. Mary asked the doctor if he thought the corn in the field would ever straighten up again. A wind storm had passed over it and many of the large stalks were almost flat upon the earth. The doctor answered cheerfully that the sun would pull it up again if Aesop wasn't a fraud. After a while they stopped at a big gate opening into a field. "Hold the reins, please, till I see if I can get the combination of that gate," and the doctor got out. Mary took a rein in each hand as he opened the gate. She clucked to the horse and he started. "Whoa! John, come and get my mite. It's about to slip out of my glove." The doctor glanced at the coin Mary deposited in his palm. "They didn't lose much." "The universal collection coin, my dear. Now open the gate wider and I'll drive through." "Don't hit the gate post!" She looked at him with disdain. "I never drove through a gate in my life that somebody didn't yell, 'Don't hit the gate post' and yet I never _have_ hit a gate post." At this retort the doctor had much ado to get the gate fastened and pull himself into the buggy, and his laughter had hardly subsided before they drew up to the large farm house in the field. Mary did not go in. In about twenty minutes the doctor came out. The door-step turned, almost causing him to fall. "Here's a fine chance for a broken bone and some of you will get it if you don't fix this step," he growled. "I'll fix that tomorrow," said the farmer, "but I should think you'd be the last one to complain about it, Doctor." "Some people seem to think that doctors and their wives are filled with mercenary malice," said Mary laughing. "Yesterday I was walking along with a lady when I stopped to remove a banana skin from the sidewalk. She said she would think a doctor's wife wouldn't take the trouble to remove banana skins from the walk." "I believe in preventive medicine," said the doctor, "and mending broken steps and removing banana peeling belong to it." "Do you think it will ever be an established fact?" asked Mary as they drove away. "I do indeed. It will be the medicine of the future." "I'm glad I'm not a woman of the future, then, for I really don't want to starve to death."