Demarest was jumping on his wheel to follow, when her father called out, "Don't let her ride up-hill too fast, Doctor!" "Isn't papa absurd?" she asked, laughing; "and grandpa, too? They are always wanting me to take care of myself, just as if I didn't!" They overtook and passed a woman weighing two hundred pounds and full forty years of age, who was toiling along on a bicycle, dressed in a white skirt, a pink shirt-waist, and a straw sailor-hat. The Doctor turned and bowed to this strange apparition, but the plump lady was too fully occupied in her arduous task to be able to do more than gasp out: "Good--after--noon--Doctor." When they had gone one hundred yards ahead the Doctor's companion expressed her surprise. "You do know the funniest people!" she cried. "Who on earth was that?" "That?" he echoed. "Oh, that's a patient of Dr. Cheever's. He advised her to get a bicycle if she wanted to be thinner--" "And he told me to get one if I wanted to be a little fatter!" the girl interrupted. "Isn't that inconsistent?" "I don't think so," the young man answered, glad that the conversation had taken this impersonal turn, and yet wondering how he could twist it to the point where he wanted it. "Outdoor exercise helps people to health, you see, and if they are unhealthily fat it tends to thin them down, and if they are very thin it helps them to put on flesh." "I'd bike fourteen hours a day if I was a porpoise like that," said the girl, glancing back at the plump struggler behind them. Just then a horn tooted and a coach came around the next turn. There were on it three or four girls in gay spring costumes, and two of them bowed to Dr. Demarest. Behind the four-in-hand followed a stylish victoria, in which sat a handsome young woman alone. She was in black. Her somber face lighted with a smile as she acknowledged the young doctor's bow. "I've seen her somewhere," said the girl by his side. "Who is she?" "That's Mrs. Cyrus Poole," he answered; "the widow of the Wall Street operator who died two years ago." "What lots of people you know," she commented. "How is a young doctor to get on unless he knows lots of people?" was his answer. She said nothing for a minute or two, as they threaded their way through a tangle of vehicles stretching along the northernmost drive of the Park. Then she asked: "Why is it that most of the women we have passed this afternoon sitting back in their carriages look bored to death?" "I suppose it's because they've got all they want," the Doctor responded. "They have nothing left to live for; they have had everything. That's what makes them so useful to our profession. They send for us because they are bored, and they want sympathy. I suppose everybody likes to talk about himself, especially when he's out of sorts; now, you see, the family doctor can always be sent for, and it's his business to listen to your account of your symptoms. That's what he's paid for."