"Ben, you'd best hurry a little if you're to have any time with Uncle John at the office." "Yes," said Ben unhappily, and was in the saddle looking down, more than ever reluctant to be going away. "I'll tell you after supper, what he says. Ru, what was that?--you started to say that if I sail, then you also--?" Ben had spoken softly, in his confusion. He supposed Reuben had not heard, for he did not answer, and that was a discourtesy Ben had never known him to employ. Ben saw him rub his hand along Molly's fat neck. "Be a good horse," said Reuben, and was gone, walking quickly around the stable, the shortest way to the back fields. * * * * * The cottage with the green shutters sat comfortably under the dignity of twin elms--like its owner mild, and quiet, and rather old, carrying age as an elm does with rugged awkwardness, with many scars, without pomp and circumstance. Reuben had learned the inside of the cottage--simple, on the same stark plan as the house in Deerfield, with two main downstairs rooms and a garret, but where the Deerfield house had owned a small lean-to off the kitchen, Mr. Welland had a larger annex, more solidly built, which he called the surgery. It was also his reception room for patients, his library, his study, his room of contemplation. The gray striped lady, Goody Snively, who kept the cottage rather constantly supplied with kittens (often yellow), lived here in a box of her own beside the wood-box at the fireplace. Very few patients ever came to Mr. Welland here at the cottage, so few that he did not try to keep precise hours for them, but it was understood that he would ordinarily be at home in the late hours of the afternoon. Most of his work was done in visits that often took him a considerable distance to outlying farms. A small stable stood separate from the cottage, home of the brown mare Meg, who carried Mr. Welland on his labors in all weathers, all times of day or night. He claimed that Meg was a better diagnostician of the purse than himself, being always restless outside the houses of wealthy patients, who were invariably the slowest to pay his charges. That puzzled Reuben. "You'll learn," said Mr. Welland. "Your great-uncle is one of perhaps five exceptions to the rule that I can remember."