Then, as he did not answer, she added, calling out shrilly: "I don't see why John Upham can't call in Lawrence, if he wants a doctor; he's begun to study with his father; he can't have nothin' against him.

I guess he knows as much as you do." "Mother's queer," Jerome told himself as he went down the road, and then dismissed the matter from his mind, for the consideration of the Upham baby and the probable nature of its ailment, upon which, however, he did not allow himself to dwell too long.

Early in his amateur practice Jake Noyes had inculcated one precept in his mind, upon which he always acted.
"There's one thing I want to tell ye, J'rome, and I want ye to remember it," Jake Noyes had said, "and that is, a doctor had ought to be like jurymen--he'd ought to be sworn in to be unprejudiced when he goes to see a patient, just as a juryman is when he goes to court.
If you don't know what ails 'em, don't ye go to speculatin', as to what 'tis an' what ye'll do, on the way there.

Ten chances to one, if you're workin' up measles in your mind an' what you'll do for them, you'll find it's mumps, an' then you've got to cure your own measles afore you cure their mumps; an' if you're hard-bitted an' can't stop yourself easy when you're once headed, you may give saffron tea to bring out the measles whether or no.

Think of the prospect, or the gals, or your soul's salvation, or anythin' but the sick folks, before you get to 'em the first time and don't know what ails 'em." In girls Jerome had, so far, no interest; in his soul's salvation he had little active concern.