The girl laughed merrily, and slipped her arm through his. A few minutes later they were seated at a little table in a secluded corner of the doctor’s favorite chophouse.
“By the way, I met a friend of yours a few minutes ago,” announced the doctor, after they had given their orders. “He was coming out of the White House, and––were you ever in a miniature cyclone? Well, that was Ames! He blew me right off the sidewalk! So angry, he didn’t see me. That’s twice to-day I’ve been sent to the gutter!” He laughed heartily over his experiences, then added significantly: “You and he are both mental cyclones, but producing diametrically opposite effects.”
Carmen remained seriously thoughtful. The doctor went on chatting volubly. “Ames and the President don’t seem to be pulling together as well as usual. The President has come out squarely against him now in the matter of the cotton schedule. Ames declares that the result will be a general financial panic this fall. By the way, Mr. Sands, the Express correspondent, seems to be getting mighty close to administration affairs these days. Where did he get that data regarding a prospective National Bureau of Health, do you suppose?”
“I gave it to him,” was the simple reply.
The doctor dropped his fork, and stared at the girl. “You!” he exclaimed. “Well––of course you naturally would be opposed to it. But––”
“Tell me,” she interrupted, “tell me candidly just what you doctors are striving for, anyway. For universal health? Are your activities all quite utilitarian, or––is it money and monopoly that you are after? It makes a lot of difference, you know, in one’s attitude toward you. If you really seek the betterment of health, then you are only honestly mistaken in your zeal. But if you are doing this to make money––and I think you are––then you are a lot of rascals, deserving defeat.”
“Miss Carmen, do you impugn my motives?” He laughed lightly at the thought.
“N––well––” She hesitated. He began to color slightly under her keen scrutiny. “Well,” she finally continued, “let’s see. If you doctors have made the curative arts effective, and if you really do heal disease, then I must support you, of course. But, while there is nothing quite so important to the average mortal as his health, yet I know that there is hardly anything that has been dealt with in such a bungling way. The art of healing as employed by our various schools of medicine to-day is the result of ages and ages of experimentation and bitter experience, isn’t it? And its cost in human lives is simply incalculable. No science is so speculative, none so hypothetical, as the so-called science of medicine.”
“But we have had to learn,” protested the doctor.