“It is,” she answered, smiling at him. “There are lots of things in it every doctor don’t know. It was written by a woman.”
“That’s the reason, I reckon,” said Tom.
He laid the book down and seemed to forget it, but about an hour after when his bedroom candle was brought and he was on the point of retiring for the night, he turned upon the threshold of the sitting-room and spoke to his hostess in the tone of one suddenly recollecting himself.
“Where did you say you got that book?” he inquired, snuffing his candle with his thumb and forefinger.
“I didn’t say at all,” answered Jenny. “I got it from Brough & Bros., Baltimore.”
“Oh, there!” he remarked. “Good-night.”
When he reached his room and shut himself in, he set his candlestick on a table and proceeded to draw from his pocket the memorandum-book, also producing the stump of a lead pencil.
Then he made as he stood up before the looking-glass and in the flickering light of the candle, an entry which was as follows: “Advice to Young Mothers, Brough & Bros.” He made it with a grave countenance and a business-like manner, and somehow, owing it may be to the small size of the room, its low ceilings and many shadows, or the flickering of the candle, his colossal height and breadth of body and tremendous look of strength had never seemed so marked nor appeared so to overpower the objects surrounding him.
Having completed the entry, he shut up the book and returned it to his pocket with a relieved air.
“If a man ain’t a young mother,” he remarked, “I guess he can get the good of it, if he gives himself time. And what she wants”—rather hurriedly—“is to get as good a start as if she had a young mother.”