“Is you?” asked her mother bewilderedly.
“Well, when you’ve got an idea you can’t
control and it makes you its slave, it’s a vice.
I’m John’s vice, and I’m thinking
of trying to cure him of it—and cure myself
too,” Kitty added, folding and unfolding the
paper in her hand.
“Here comes the Young Doctor,” said her
mother, turning towards the house. “I think
you don’t mean to marry Sibley, but if you do,
make him give up gambling.”
“I don’t know that I want him to give
it up,” answered Kitty musingly.
A moment later she was alone with the Young Doctor.
ALL ABOUT AN UNOPENED LETTER
“What’s this you’ve been doing?”
asked the Young Doctor, with a quizzical smile.
“We never can tell where you’ll break out.”
“Kitty Tynan’s measles!” she rejoined,
swinging her hat by its ribbon. “Mine isn’t
a one-sided character, is it?”
“I know one of the sides quite well,”
returned the Young Doctor.
“Which, please, sir?”
The Young Doctor pretended to look wise. “The
outside. I read it like a book. It fits
the life in which it moves like the paper on the wall.
But I’m not sure of the inside. In fact,
I don’t think I know that at all.”
“So I couldn’t call you in if my character
was sick inside, could I?” she asked obliquely.
“I might have an operation, and see what’s
wrong with it,” he answered playfully.
Suddenly she shivered. “I’ve had
enough of operations to last me awhile,” she
rejoined. “I thought I could stand anything,
but your operation on Mr. Crozier taught me a lesson.
I’d never be a doctor’s wife if I had to
help him cut up human beings.”
“I’ll remember that,” the Young
Doctor replied mockingly.
“But if it would help put things on a right
basis, I’d make a bargain that I wasn’t
to help do the carving,” she rejoined wickedly.
The Young Doctor always incited her to say daring
things. They understood each other well.
“So don’t let that stand in the way,”
she added slyly.
“The man who marries you will be glad to get
you without the anatomy,” he returned gallantly.
“I wasn’t talking of a man; I was talking
of a doctor.”
He threw up a hand and his eyebrows. “Isn’t
a doctor a man?”
“Those I’ve seen have been mostly fish.”
“No feelings—eh?”
She looked him in the eyes, and he felt a kind of
shiver go through him. “Not enough to notice.
I never observed you had any,” she replied.
“If I saw that you had, I’d be so frightened
I’d fly. I’ve seen pictures of an
excited whale turning a boat full of men over.
No, I couldn’t bear to see you show any feeling.”
