"Oh, there you go!" the doctor said smiling. "That's the
shorter catechism coming out in you--that Scotch complacency
is the thing I wish I had, but I can't help feeling like
a rogue, a cheat, an oppressor of the helpless, when I
look at Pleurisy."
"Horace," the minister said kindly, with his level gray
eyes fixed thoughtfully on his friend's handsome face,
"a man in either your calling or mine has no right to
ask himself how he feels. Don't feel your own pulse too
much. It is disquieting. It is for us to go on, never
faltering and never looking behind."
"In other words, to make good, and never mind the fans,"
the doctor smiled. Then he became serious. "But Grantley,
I am not always so sure I am right as you are. You see
a sinner is always a sinner and in danger of damnation,
for which there is but one cure, but a sick man may have
quinsy or he may have diphtheria, and the treatment is
different. But oh! Grantley, I wish I had that Scotch-gray
confidence in myself that you have. If you were a doctor
you would tell a man he had typhoid, and he'd proceed to
have it, even if he had only set out to have an ingrowing
toe-nail. But my patients have a decided will of their
own. There's young Ab Cowan--they sent for me last night
to go out to see him. He has a bad attack of quinsy, but
it is the strangest case I ever saw."
The gaiety had died out of the young man's face, and he
looked perplexed and anxious.
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