William said that he would like another cup of coffee.
"It wouldn't be good for you," said his Martha; "you are drinking too much coffee. You can have shells if you want to. Shall I have some shells warmed up?"
William said "No," and went trudging off to his office; and then, at ten, started on his round of calls, his old buggy still unwashed from the morning jaunt to the hypochondriac's death-bed. The day was still and sunny, the road quite deserted and full of pleasant shadows under the May foliage. But the sleepy doctor saw it all through half-closed eyes, and yawned, and rested one plump leg on the dash-board, and let the reins hang swaying from the hook in the roof of the bug-pry. Then, suddenly, his mare stopped and William opened his eyes.
"Caught you napping, Willy!" said a loud, hearty voice. And the doctor sat up and drew his leg in and laughed.
"Well, Miss Harriet, how do you know but what I was worrying over a case?"
"Much worrying you do, young man!" She sat down on a log on the road-bank and smiled at him. She was a big, vigorous woman with a fresh, brown face and a keen, kind eye. She had a gun in her hand, and a rabbit's white tail stuck out of the hunting-wallet slung over her shoulder. She had broken through the underbrush on the hill-side just as Willy's buggy jogged into the shadow of a sycamore that stretched its mottled arms over the deserted road.
"Willy," she went on, in her loud, cheerful voice, "do you doctor-men smile at one another when you meet, like the Augurs, because you fool us so easily with your big words? You call a scratched finger an 'abrasion of the epidermis'--and then you send a bill. And, bless me! what a serious air you put on at a minute's notice!--I saw you pull your leg in, Willy. Come, now; you were in my Sunday-school class--why don't you just admit to me that that piercing look over your eye-glasses is one of the tricks of the trade? I won't tell."
William King chuckled. "You just get a touch of lumbago, Miss Harriet, and you'll believe in my tricks."
"Lumbago!" said his reviler. "Not I; a day's shooting would cure it quicker than a barrel of your pills."
"No; I set a trap in Dawson's hollow." She pulled out the rabbit and held it up. "Not a bone broken. Handsome, isn't he? Poor little thing!"