There was a shuffling step on the stairway, accompanied by spasmodic shrieks and an occasional "ouch." Roger looked up from his book in surprise as Miss Mattie made her painful way into the room.

"Why, Mother. What's the matter?"

Miss Mattie sat down in the chair she had made out of a flour barrel and screamed as she did so. "What is it?" he demanded. "Are you ill?"

"Roger," she replied, "my back is either busted, or the hinge in it is rusty from overwork. I stooped over to open the lower drawer in my bureau, and when I come to rise up, I couldn't. I've been over half an hour comin' downstairs. I called you twice, but you didn't hear me, and I knowed you was readin', so I thought I might better save my voice to yell with."

"I'm sorry," he said. "What can I do for you?"

"About the first thing to do, I take it, is to put down that book. Now, if you'll put on your hat, you can go and get that new-fangled doctor from the city. The postmaster's wife told me yesterday that he'd sent Barbara one of them souverine postal cards and said on it he'd be down last night. As you go, you might stop and tell the Norths that he's comin', for they don't go after their mail much and most likely it's still there in the box. Tell Barbara that the card has a picture of a terrible high buildin' on it and the street is full of carriages, both horsed and unhorsed. If he can make the lame walk and the blind see, I reckon he can fix my back. I'll set here."

"Shan't I get someone to stay with you while I'm gone, Mother? I don't like to leave you here alone. Miss Miriam would——"

"Miss Miriam," interrupted his mother, "ain't fit company for a horse or cow, let alone a sufferin' woman. She just sets and stares and never says nothin'. I have to do all the talkin' and I'm in no condition to talk. You run along and let me set here in peace. It don't hurt so much when I set still."

Roger obediently started on his errand, but met Doctor Conrad half-way. The two had never been formally introduced, but Roger knew him, and the Doctor remembered Roger as "the nice boy" who was with Ambrose North and Eloise when he went over to tell them that Barbara was all right.

"Why, yes," said Allan. "If it's an emergency case, I'll come there first. After I see what's the matter, I'll go over to North's and then come back. I seem to be getting quite a practice in Riverdale."

When they went in, Roger introduced Doctor Conrad to the patient. "You'll excuse my not gettin' up," said Miss Mattie, "for it's about the gettin' up that I wanted to see you. Roger, you run away. It ain't proper for boys to be standin' around listenin' when woman suffrage is bein' discussed by the only people havin' any right to talk of it—women and doctors."

Roger coloured to his temples as he took his hat and hurried out. With an effort Doctor Conrad kept his face straight, but his eyes were laughing.

"Now, what's wrong?" asked Allan, briefly, as Roger closed the door.

"It's my back," explained the patient. "It's busted. It busted all of a sudden."

"Was it when you were stooping over, perhaps to pick up something?"

Miss Mattie stared at him in astonishment. "Are you a mind-reader, or did Roger tell you?"

"Neither," smiled Allan. "Did a sharp pain come in the lumbar region when you attempted to straighten up?"

"'Twan't the lumber room. I ain't been in the attic for weeks, though I expect it needs straightenin'. It was in my bedroom. I was stoopin' over to open a bureau drawer, and when I riz up, I found my back was busted."

"I see," said Allan. He was already writing a prescription. "If your son will go down and get this filled, you will have no more trouble. Take two every four hours."

Miss Mattie took the bit of paper anxiously. "No surgical operation?" she asked.

"No," laughed Allan.

"No mortar piled up on me and left to set? No striped nurses?"

"No plaster cast," Allan assured her, "and no striped nurses."

"I reckon it ain't none of my business," remarked Miss Mattie, "but why didn't you do somethin' like this for Barbara instead of cuttin' her up? I'm worse off than she ever was, because she could walk right spry with crutches, and crutches wouldn't have helped me none when I was risin' up from the bureau drawer."

"Barbara's case is different. She had a congenital dislocation of the femur."

Miss Mattie's jaw dropped, but she quickly recovered herself. "And what have I got?"

"Lumbago."

"My disease is shorter," she commented, after a moment of reflection, "but I'll bet it feels worse."

"I'll ask your son to come in if I see him," said Doctor Conrad, reaching for his hat, "and if you don't get well immediately, let me know. Good-bye."

Roger was nowhere in sight, but he was watching the two houses, and as soon as he saw Doctor Conrad go into North's, he went back to his mother.

"Barbara's disease has three words in it, Roger," she explained, "and mine has only one, but it's more painful. You're to go immediately with this piece of paper and get it full of the medicine he's written on it. I've been lookin' at it, but I don't get no sense out of it. He said to take two every four hours—two what?"

"Pills, probably, or capsules."

"Pills? Now, Roger, you know that no pill small enough to swallow could cure a big pain like this in my back. The postmaster's wife had the rheumatiz last Winter, and she took over five quarts of Old Doctor Jameson's Pain Killer, and it never did her a mite of good. What do you think a paper that size, full of pills, can do for a person that ain't able to stand up without screechin'?"

"Well, we'll try it anyway, Mother. Just sit still until I come back with the medicine."

He went out and returned, presently, with a red box containing forty or fifty capsules. Miss Mattie took it from him and studied it carefully. "This box ain't more'n a tenth as big as the pain," she observed critically.

Roger brought a glass of water and took out two of the capsules. "Take these," he said, "and at half past two, take two more. Let's give Doctor Conrad a fair trial. It's probably a more powerful medicine than it seems to be."

Miss Mattie had some difficulty at first, as she insisted on taking both capsules at once, but when she was persuaded to swallow one after the other, all went well. "I suppose," she remarked, "that these long narrow pills have to be took endways. If a person went to swallow 'em crossways, they'd choke to death. I was careful how I took 'em, but other people might not be, and I think, myself, that round pills are safer."

"I went to the office," said Roger, "and told the Judge I wouldn't be down to-day. I have some work I can do at home, and I'd rather not leave you."

"It's just come to my mind now," mused Miss Mattie, ignoring his thoughtfulness, "about the minister's sermon Sunday. He said that everything that came to us might teach us something if we only looked for it. I've been thinkin' as I set here, what a heap I've learned about my back this mornin'. I never sensed, until now, that it was used in walkin'. I reckoned that my back was just kind of a finish to me and was to keep the dust out of my vital organs more'n anything else. This mornin' I see that the back is entirely used in walkin'. What gets me is that Barbara North had to have crutches when her back was all right. Nothin' was out of kilter but her legs, and only one of 'em at that."

"Here's your paper, Mother." Roger pulled The Metropolitan Weekly out of his pocket.

"Lay it down on the table, please. It oughtn't to have come until to-morrow. I ain't got time for it now."

"Why, Mother? Don't you want to read?"

The knot of hair on the back of Miss Mattie's head seemed to rise, and her protruding wire hairpins bristled. "I should think you'd know," she said, indignantly, "when you've been takin' time from the law to read your pa's books to Barbara North, that no sick person has got the strength to read. Even if my disease is only in one word when hers is in three, I reckon I'm goin' to take proper care of myself."

"But you're sitting up and she can't," explained Roger, kindly.

"Sittin' up or not sittin' up ain't got nothin' to do with it. If my back was set in mortar as it ought to have been, I wouldn't be settin' up either. I can't get up without screamin', and as long as I've knowed Barbara she's never been that bad. That new-fangled doctor hasn't come out of North's yet, either. How much do you reckon he charges for a visit?"

"Two or three dollars, I suppose."

Miss Mattie clucked sharply with her false teeth. "'Cordin' to that," she calculated, "he was here about twenty cents' worth. But I'm willin' to give him a quarter—that's a nickel extra for the time he was writin' out the recipe for them long narrow pills that would choke anybody but a horse if they happened to go down crossways. There he comes, now. If he don't come here of his own accord, you go out and get him, Roger. I want he should finish his visit."

But it was not necessary for Roger to go. "Of his own accord," Doctor Conrad came across the street and opened the creaky white gate. When he came in, he brought with him the atmosphere of vitality and good cheer. He had, too, that gentle sympathy which is the inestimable gift of the physician, and which requires no words to make itself felt.

His quick eye noted the box of capsules upon the table, as he sat down and took Miss Mattie's rough, work-worn hand in his. "How is it?" he asked. "Better?"

"Mebbe," she answered, grudgingly. "No more'n a mite, though."

"That's all we can expect so soon. By to-morrow morning, though, you should be all right." His manner unconsciously indicated that it would be the one joy of a hitherto desolate existence if Miss Mattie should be perfectly well again in the morning.

"How's my fellow sufferer?" she inquired, somewhat mollified.

"Barbara? She's doing very well. She's a brave little thing."

"Which is the sickest—her or me?"

"As regards actual pain," replied Doctor Conrad, tactfully, "you are probably suffering more than she is at the present moment."

"I knowed it," cried Miss Mattie triumphantly. "Do you hear that, Roger?"

But Roger had slipped out, remembering that "woman suffrage" was not a proper subject for discussion in his hearing.

"I reckon he's gone over to North's," grumbled Miss Mattie. "When my eye ain't on him, he scoots off. His pa was the same way. He was forever chasin' over there and Roger's inherited it from him. Whenever I've wanted either of 'em, they've always been took with wanderin' fits."

"You sent him out before," Allan reminded her.

"So I did, but I ain't sent him out now and he's gone just the same. That's the trouble. After you once get an idea into a man's head, it stays put. You can't never get it out again. And ideas that other people puts in is just the same."

"Women change their minds more easily, don't they?" asked Allan. He was enjoying himself very much.

"Of course. There's nothin' set about a woman unless she's got a busted back. She ain't carin' to move around much then. The postmaster's wife was tellin' me about one of the women at the hotel—the one that's writin' the book. Do you know her?"

"I've probably seen her."

"The postmaster's wife's bunion was a hurtin' her awful one day when this woman come in after stamps, and she told her to go and help herself and put the money in the drawer. So she did, and while she was doin' it she told the postmaster's wife that she didn't have no bunion and no pain—that it was all a mistake."

"'You wouldn't think so,' says the postmaster's wife, 'if it was your foot that had the mistake on it.' She was awful mad at first, but, after she got calmed down, the book-woman told her what she meant."

"'There ain't no pain nor disease in the world,' she says. 'It's all imagination.'

"'Well,' says the postmaster's wife, 'when the swellin' is so bad, how'm I to undeceive myself?'

"The book-woman says: 'Just deny it, and affirm the existence of good. You just set down and say to yourself: "I can't have no bunion cause there ain't no such thing, and it can't hurt me because there is no such thing as pain. My foot is perfectly well and strong. I will get right up and walk."'

"As soon as the woman was gone out with her stamps, the postmaster's wife tried it and like to have fainted dead away. She said she might have been able to convince her mind that there wasn't no bunion on her foot, but she couldn't convince her foot. She said there wasn't no such thing as pain, and the bunion made it its first business to do a little denyin' on its own account. You have to be awful careful not to offend a bunion.

"This mornin', while Roger was gone after them long, narrow pills that has to be swallowed endways unless you want to choke to death, I reckoned I'd try it on my back. So I says, right out loud: 'My back don't hurt me. It is all imagination. I can't have no pain because there ain't no such thing.' Then I stood up right quick, and—Lord!"

Miss Mattie shook her head sadly at the recollection. "Do you know," she went on, thoughtfully, "I wish that woman at the hotel had lumbago?"

Doctor Conrad's nice brown eyes twinkled, and his mouth twitched, ever so slightly. "I'm afraid I do, too," he said.

"If she did, and wanted some of them long narrow pills, would you give 'em to her?"

"Probably, but I'd be strongly tempted not to."

When he took his leave, Miss Mattie, from force of habit, rose from her chair. "Ouch!" she said, as she slowly straightened up. "Why, I do believe it's better. It don't hurt nothin' like so much as it did."

"Your surprise isn't very flattering, Mrs. Austin, but I'll forgive you. The next time I come up, I'll take another look at you. Good-bye."

Miss Mattie made her way slowly over to the table where the box of capsules lay, and returned, with some effort, to her chair. She studied both the box and its contents faithfully, once with her spectacles, and once without. "You'd never think," she mused, "that a pill of that size and shape could have any effect on a big pain that's nowheres near your stomach. He must be a dreadful clever young man, for it sure is a searchin' medicine."