When Dr. Callandar, having been efficiently valeted by Bubble, set out to pay his first professional call, he drew in deep breaths of the pleasant air with a feeling of well-being to which he had long been a stranger.  He had slept.  In spite of the room, in spite of the chocolate cake, in spite of the pie, he had slept.  And that alone was enough to make the whole world over.  It was still hot but with a heat different from the heat of yesterday.  A little shower had fallen during the night.  There was a sense of the north in the air, a light freshness, very invigorating.  He liked the quiet shaded streets; the cannon by the courthouse amused him; the number of church steeples left him amazed.  He felt as if he had stumbled into a dream-town and must walk carefully lest he stumble out.

Bubble had given him very complete directions, indeed so minute were they that we will omit them lest some day you find the way yourself and drop in on Mrs. Sykes when she is not expecting company.  But Dr. Callandar in his amused absorption had forgotten that he was going to Mrs. Sykes at all, when he was recalled to a sense of duty by a sharp hail from the corner house of a street he had just passed.  Looking back, he saw, half-way down the road, a tall, red woman leaning over a gate, who, upon attracting his attention, began waving her arms frantically, after the manner of an old-fashioned signalman inviting a train to “Come on.”  Callandar’s step quickened in spite of himself and he forgot his idle musings.

“Land sakes!  I thought you’d never get here!” exclaimed the red woman fervently.  “I suppose that imp of a boy didn’t direct you right.  Lucky I knew you as soon as you passed the corner.  Mark Morrison may be as useless as they make ’em, but he’s got a fine gift for description.  Come right in.  I’m dreadful anxious about Ann.  It don’t seem like measles, and she’s had chicken-pox twice, and if she’s sickening for anything worse I want to know it.  I ain’t one of them optimists that won’t believe they’re sick till they’re dead.  Callandar’s your name, Mark says—­any chance of your being a cousin to Dr. Callandar of Montreal that cured Mrs. Sowerby?”

“No, I am not that Dr. Callandar’s cousin.”

“I told Mark ’twasn’t likely—­or you wouldn’t be here.  Not if he’d any family feeling.  I’m a great believer in a man making his own stepping-stones anyway,” she went on with a friendly smile; “we ought to rise up on ourselves, like the poet says, and not on our cousins.”

“A noble sentiment,” said Callandar gravely, as he followed her up the walk, across a veranda so clean that one hesitated to step on it, and into a small hall, bare and spotless, where he was invited to hang up his hat.

“You’re younger than I expected,” went on Mrs. Sykes kindly.  “I hope you ain’t entirely dependent on your practice in Coombe?”

The amazed doctor was understood to murmur something about “private means.”