"Hello, doctor!" said Jack, as unconcernedly as he would have passed the time of day with Jim Galway in the street.
"Hello, Jack!" said the doctor.
Jack went just half-way across the room to shake hands. Then he dropped back to his easy position, with the table as a rest, after he had set a chair for the visitor.
"How do you like Little Rivers?" Jack asked.
"I have been here only thirty-six hours," answered the doctor, avoiding a direct answer. He was pulling off his silk summer gloves, making the operation a trifle elaborate, one which seemed to require much attention. "I came pretty near mistaking another man for you, but his mole patch saved me. I didn't think you could have grown one out here. Wonderfully like you! Have you met him?"
He glanced up as he asked this question, which seemed the first to occur to him as a warming-up topic of conversation before he came to the business in hand.
"No. I have just heard of him," Jack answered.
The doctor smiled at his gloves, which he now folded and put in his pocket. Don't the lecturers to young medical students say, "Divert your patient's mind to some topic other than himself as you get your first impression"? Now Dr. Bennington drew forward in his chair, rested the tips of the long fingers of a soft, capable hand on the edge of the table, and looked up to Jack in professional candor, sweeping him with the knowing eye of the modern confessor of the secrets of all manner of mankind. With the other hand he drew a stethoscope from his side coat-pocket.
"Well, Jack, you can guess what brought me all the way from New York—just five minutes' work!" and he gave the symbol of examination a flourish in emphasis.
"I don't think I have forgotten the etiquette of the patient on such occasions," Jack returned. "It is an easy function in this Arizona climate."