“I supposed bein' a doctor's wife you'd learnt everything like that.”
“I have learned many things by being a doctor's wife, very many things, but what to do with a leg and foot that are mortifying I really could not tell you.” Mary turned her face away to hide a laugh that was getting near the surface. “I will have the doctor drive up to the house when he gets back if you wish,” she said, turning to her companion.
“Maybe that would be best. Your husband cured me once when I thought nothing would ever get me well again. I think more of him than any other man in the world.”
“Thank you. So do I.”
She started off and Mary went on gathering nuts, her face breaking into smiles at the queer errand and the restorative power imputed to herself. “If it is as serious as she thinks, all the doctors in the world can't do much for it, much less one meek and humble doctor's wife. But they could amputate, I suppose, and I'm sure I couldn't, not in a scientific way.”
Thus soliloquizing, she went from clump to clump of the low bushes till they were bereft of their fruitage. She looked down well-pleased at the robe with the nuts piled upon it. She drew the corners up and tied her bundle securely. This done she looked down the road where the doctor had disappeared. “I'll just walk on and meet him,” she thought. She went leisurely along, stopping now and then to pluck a spray of goldenrod. When she had gathered quite a bunch she looked at it closely. “You are like some people in this world—you have a pretty name and at a little distance you are pretty: but seen too close you are a disappointment, and more than that you are coarse. I don't want you,” and she flung them away. She saw dust rising far down the road and hoped it might be the doctor. Yes, it was he, and Bucephalus seemed to know that he was traveling toward home. When her husband came up and she was seated beside him, she said, “You are wanted at that little house over yonder,” and she told him what had taken place in the hazel bushes. “You're second choice though, they came for me first,” she said laughing.
“I wish to thunder you'd gone. They owe me a lot now they'll never pay.”
“At any rate, they hold you in very high esteem, John.”
“Oh, yes, but esteem butters no bread.”
“Well, you'll go, won't you? I told the woman you would.”