She started off and Mary went on gathering nuts, her face breaking into smiles at the queer errand and the restorative power imputed to herself. "If it is as serious as she thinks, all the doctors in the world can't do much for it, much less one meek and humble doctor's wife. But they could amputate, I suppose, and I'm sure I couldn't, not in a scientific way." Thus soliloquizing, she went from clump to clump of the low bushes till they were bereft of their fruitage. She looked down well-pleased at the robe with the nuts piled upon it. She drew the corners up and tied her bundle securely. This done she looked down the road where the doctor had disappeared. "I'll just walk on and meet him," she thought. She went leisurely along, stopping now and then to pluck a spray of goldenrod. When she had gathered quite a bunch she looked at it closely. "You are like some people in this world--you have a pretty name and at a little distance _you_ are pretty: but seen too close you are a disappointment, and more than that you are coarse. I don't want you," and she flung them away. She saw dust rising far down the road and hoped it might be the doctor. Yes, it was he, and Bucephalus seemed to know that he was traveling toward home. When her husband came up and she was seated beside him, she said, "You are wanted at that little house over yonder," and she told him what had taken place in the hazel bushes. "You're second choice though, they came for me first," she said laughing. "I wish to thunder you'd gone. They owe me a lot now they'll never pay." "At any rate, they hold you in very high esteem, John." "Oh, yes, but esteem butters no bread." "Well, you'll go, won't you? I told the woman you would." "Yes, I'll go." He turned into a narrow lane and in a few minutes they were at the gate. The doctor handed the reins to Mary and went inside. A girl fourteen or fifteen years old with a bald-headed baby on her arm came out of the house and down the path. "Won't you come in?" "No, thank you. We will be going home in a minute." The girl set the baby on the gate-post. "She's the smartest baby I ever saw," she said. "She's got a whole mouthful of teeth already." "And how old is she?" "She was ten months old three weeks ago last Saturday." As today was Thursday, Mary was on the point of saying, "She will be eleven months old in a few days then," but checked herself--she understood. It would detract from the baby's smartness to give her eleven months instead of only ten in which to accomplish such wonders in the way of teeth. The doctor came out and they started. Just before they came out to the main road they passed an old deserted house. No signs of life were about it except the very luxuriant life in the tall jimsons and ragweeds growing about it and reaching almost to the top of the low doorway, yawning blackly behind them.