Is she took bad ?" she continued, a merry, questioning look lighting up her kindly face, her lips pursed knowingly.
"No, only a sore throat" the doctor replied, loosening his coat.
"Throat!" she rejoined, with a wry look on her face.

"Too bad 'twarn't her tongue.

If ye could snip off a bit o' that some day it would help folks considerable 'round here." The doctor laughed in answer, dropped the lines over the dashboard and leaned forward in his seat, the sun lighting up his clean-cut face.
Busy as he was--and there were few busier men in town, as every hitching-post along the main street of Warehold village from Billy Tatham's, the driver of the country stage, to Captain Holt's, could prove--he always had time for a word with the old nurse.
"And where have YOU been, Mistress Martha ?" he asked, with a smile, dropping his whip into the socket, a sure sign that he had a few more minutes to give her.
"Oh, down to the beach to git some o' the dirt off Meg.

Look at him--did ye ever see such a rapscallion! Every time I throw him in he's into the sand ag'in wallowin' before I kin git to him." The doctor bent his head, and for an instant watched the two dogs: Meg circling about Rex, all four legs taut, his head jerking from side to side in his eagerness to be agreeable to his roadside acquaintance; the agate-eyed setter returning Meg's attentions with the stony gaze of a club swell ignoring a shabby relative.

The doctor smiled thoughtfully.
There was nothing he loved to study so much as dogs--they had a peculiar humor of their own, he often said, more enjoyable sometimes than that of men--then he turned to Martha again.
"And why are you away from home this morning of all others ?" he asked.
"I thought Miss Lucy was expected from school to-day ?" "And so she is, God bless her! And that's why I'm here.