“I'll fix that tomorrow,” said the farmer, “but I should think you'd be the last one to complain about it, Doctor.”
“Some people seem to think that doctors and their wives are filled with mercenary malice,” said Mary laughing. “Yesterday I was walking along with a lady when I stopped to remove a banana skin from the sidewalk. She said she would think a doctor's wife wouldn't take the trouble to remove banana skins from the walk.”
“I believe in preventive medicine,” said the doctor, “and mending broken steps and removing banana peeling belong to it.”
“Do you think it will ever be an established fact?” asked Mary as they drove away.
“I do indeed. It will be the medicine of the future.”
“I'm glad I'm not a woman of the future, then, for I really don't want to starve to death.”
“I have to visit a patient a few miles farther on,” said the doctor when they came out on the highway. Soon they were driving across a knoll and fields of tasseled corn lay before them. A little farther and they entered the woods. “Ah, Mary, I would not worry about leaving church. The groves were God's first temples.” After a little he said, “I was trying to think what Beecher said about trees—it was something like this: ‘Without doubt better trees there might be than even the most noble and beautiful now. Perhaps God has in his thoughts much better ones than he has ever planted on this globe. They are reserved for the glorious land.’”
“See this, John!” and Mary pointed to a group of trees they were passing, “a ring cut around every one of them!”
“Yes, the fool's idea of things is to go out and kill a tree by the roadside—often standing where it can't possibly do any harm. How often in my drives I have seen this and it always makes me mad.”
They drove for a while in silence, then Mary said, “Nature seems partial to gold.” She had been noting the Spanish needles and Black-eyed Susans which starred the dusty roadside and filled the field on the left with purest yellow, while golden-rod and wild sunflowers bloomed profusely on all sides.