"It won't seem long. You know I like to be alone." "Good-bye, then," and the doctor started off. "Wait! John," his wife called after him. "I haven't a thing to put the nuts in, please throw me the laprobe." The doctor crushed the robe into a sort of bundle and threw it to her. She spread the robe upon the ground and began plucking the bunches. Her fingers flew nimbly over the bushes and soon she had a pile of the brown treasures. Dear old times came trooping back. She thought of far-off autumn days when she had taken her little wagon and gone out to the hazel bushes growing near her father's house, and filled it to the top and tramped it down and filled it yet again. Then a gray October day came back when three or four girls and boys, all busy in the bushes, talked in awed tones of the great fire--Chicago was burning up! Big, big Chicago, which they had never seen or dreamed of seeing--all because a cow kicked over a lamp. Mary moved to another clump of bushes. As she worked she thought if she had never known the joy of gathering nuts and wild grapes and persimmons, of wandering through woods and meadows, her childhood would have lost much that is beautiful and best, and her womanhood many of its dearest recollections. "You're the doctor's wife, ain't ye?" Mary looked around quite startled. A tall woman in a blue calico dress and a brown gingham sunbonnet was standing there. "I didn't want to scare ye, I guess you didn't see me comin'." "I didn't know you were coming--yes, I am the doctor's wife." "We saw ye from the house and supposed he'd gone on to see old man Benning and that you had stopped to pick nuts." "You guessed it exactly," said Mary with a smile. "We live about a quarter mile back from the road so I didn't see the doctor in time to stop him." "Is some one sick at your house, then?" "Well, my man ain't a doin' right, somehow. He's been ailin' for some time and his left foot and leg is a turnin' blue. I come to see if you could tell me somethin' I could do for it. I'm afraid it's mortifyin'." Mary's brown eyes opened wide. "Why, my dear woman, I couldn't tell you anything to do. I don't know anything at all about such things." "I supposed bein' a doctor's wife you'd learnt everything like that." "I have learned many things by being a doctor's wife, very many things, but what to do with a leg and foot that are mortifying I really could not tell you." Mary turned her face away to hide a laugh that was getting near the surface. "I will have the doctor drive up to the house when he gets back if you wish," she said, turning to her companion. "Maybe that would be best. Your husband cured me once when I thought nothing would ever get me well again. I think more of him than any other man in the world." "Thank you. So do I."