“Oh, yes she could,” replied the doctor with great nonchalance.
“I couldn't!” said the patient with much vigor. This was just what he wanted. He examined her carefully but said not a word.
“How long do you think I'll live?” she asked after a little.
“Well, that's a hard question to answer—but you ought to be good for forty or fifty years yet.”
The patient sniffed contemptuously. “Huh, I guess you don't know it all if you are a doctor.”
“I know enough to know there's mighty little the matter with you.” He turned to one of the women. “I would like to see her mother,” he said. The mother had left the room on an errand; the woman rose and went out. There was a pause which Mary broke by asking the baby's name.
“We think we'll call her Orient.”
“Why not Occident?” thought Mary, but she kept still. Not so the doctor. “That's no name. Give her a good sensible name—one she won't be ashamed of when she's a woman.”
Here Mary caught sight of a red string around the baby's neck, and asked if it was a charm of some sort. The mother took hold of the string and drew up the charm. “It's a blind hog's tooth,” she said simply, “to make her cut her teeth easy.”
The mother of the patient came into the room. “How do you think she is, Doctor?”