boyish face, grief-sharpened into lines of determination, was not so sure. Again her troubled eyes implored the peaceful face across the room.

Finally, she said slowly: "Well, it can't be helped."

"What, Miz Murray?"

"Nothin', Tom, nothin'.

You go to the kitchen an' let

Miz McGregor give you a cup of coffee."

He left Mrs. Murray standing motionless in the middle of the sun-brightened room, looking at the empty tin box in her hand.

T

DOC GREER'S PRACTICE

BY AGNES MARY BROWNELL

HE beginning of Doc's practice extends back some thirty years into the latter 80's. Doc arrived in Belleview in silk plug and swallow-tail; spent money lavishly-lavishly, that is, for that day-on livery hire and the like; and soon had, it was reported, every girl in the county engaged to him. From which it may be inferred that he had a way with him. But the money he

borrowed.

He used to whip furiously out of town, on the way to some hypothetical patient; and these tactics, and others as spectacular (including the clownish plug and swallow-tail) were shortly attended by success in certain impressionable quarters. The livery team, belabored out of town, came drippingly to stand at some actual farm-house, while Doc's flapping tails and imposing brim disappeared within. Doc was a stodgy, heavily-built individual, with enormous shoulders, upon which sat a brilliant auburn head, the effect of which, when the silk plug was doffed, was as if a head-light bore into view. Doc had small, deep-set, boring eyes, curiously darker by contrast with their red brush brows, and features as yet unset. He was just out of medical school, and looked, in spite of his heavy figure, like a masquerading boy.

When Doc hunched his great shoulders down over the bed, advanced his cropped red head and looked at the pa

tient in a curiously seeing manner, as if his eyes had been little electric bulbs lighting up the darkness, the uncertainty and fear, things at once took a turn for the better. Or, more exactly perhaps, the patient thought they did. Doc could reassure (and did, invariably) a dying man; so that he went serenely confident that he was on the road to recovery, when, as a matter of fact, he was only a couple of hours away from his final destination. Doc had one infallible clincher for indignant protest: "Welldidn't he die happy? What more do you want?"

Doc had his detractors-what man has not? They made light of his ability as well as of his Jehu driving, his preposterous head gear and the coat that made him look for all the world like a peculiarly obese jackdaw. But sick folks are gullible, and they were willing to pay the livery hire to hear that they were getting well. Besides, many of them did recover. Doc had only the average

number of misses.

Some of his prescriptions were unique. Once, when called to the bedside of the wife of the richest farmer in the county, he turned to the weeping daughters and directed: "Girls, fix your mother up a mess of greens." The sick woman took the prescription, recovered for all its lack of bottle, cork and Latin, and Doc Greer was in effect canonized as a sort of household saint.

He became engaged to both girls, but the experience worked them little ill. Each married in good time her young farmer, who, while lacking Doc's transcendent charm, possessed the more stable one of sincerity. Doc welcomed their young families into the world, and soothed their infants' ills.

He spent more, made more and borrowed more. He began to receive a few first, tentative invitations to Belle

view's social life. One met him sometimes, strolling along the wooden sidewalks of a leisurely afternoon with a pretty Belleview girl. The girl was oftenest Lily Pope. This was the summer the fashion known as the Russian

blouse first came into vogue. Lily wore a Russian blouse of striped gingham, which was most becoming. She was a plump, fresh, fair-haired girl, who longed to be slender and willowy. She would never be that, but the stripes and the long lines of the blouse lent her a sort of fictitious height.

Doc Greer and Lily Pope used to stop sometimes at a crossing where she turned off, and chat about the things young people consider at crossings. Lily would dig a little hole with the point of her fine silk parasol, and droop her head under its flower-wreathed brim. She was so fair and fresh of color that the freckles stood out across her nose in a little spattered pattern. Her cheeks were downy like fruit, and their color and contour were like a sort of ineffable fruit. Her fair hair was straight, but it was so thick and fine as to roll up from her face in a sort of silver crest; and her long gray eyes, clear and cool under straight, fair brows, lent oddly enough, a contrasting note for all their grayness. It took Lily's gray eyes to subdue the fruity curve and color of her face.

The Doblers lived on the corner, and Ruby Dobler, a dangling child, all legs and arms and braids, used to hang over the Dobler gate and survey them, child fashion. She was twelve. Vague dreams of romance woke in her as she beheld the charming young-ladyism of Lily Pope. She dismissed Doc without a thought, as having nothing of the fairy prince about him; but she adored plump, sweet Lily whose attire expressed to her the very acme of style. And looking down upon her own gingham-a

strong-colored, serviceable plaid, made hateful by yoke, belt and gathered skirt,-she mused upon the inequalities of life.

It is entirely probable that Doc returned the compliment of utter oblivion to Ruby Dobler's existence. Dangling little girls, unless measly, feverish or bilious, possessed small attraction for him. And Lily only recognized her subconsciously, as "that homely little Dobler girl." It would have taken an astuter mind than Lily's, and an older experience, to suspect menace from so humble a

source.

Lily was of the town's elite, and Doc, despite the country driving, had yet to win his spurs in town. "I am surprised at Lily-taking up with him that way," confided Lena Kulp, Lily's chum, to the others; and they came unwillingly to include him in their small festivities. Doc really strove to do Lily credit. For all his boorish figure, his great shoulders, the gleaming head-light of his hair, the swallow-tail and the plug, he had a certain disarming quality, a sort of shaggy, mastiff good nature and appeal. He would sit, his great red hands with their cushion backs, spread upon his shiny knees, voiceless in their assemblings, but shaken with a sort of internal enjoyment, and radiating silent cheer. When he spoke, it was in a sort of bass purr; and his great palm, thrust suddenly against a shoulder, was like a tiger cub's caress. Beneath the animal grossness of him was the feeling of power.

Before long they had accepted him for himself; but to Lily belonged the credit of making him. He was her cub, with all the delightful possibilities of his great cat nature. The plug passed, and the swallow-tail, and were replaced with more conservative business attire. Doc continued to make, to spend, and to borrow. His fame and prac