“I am not a little boy. Observe the bald spot on my head.”
“Any unmarried man is as a little boy concerning women, be he as old as you. Moral: Get married. And I wish you would hurry. I can’t employ you till you do. And until I employ you, you will have no patients.”
Doctor Rem laughed good-naturedly.
“Well, you know, I have such an awful reputation for being a brute—”
“She has never heard of you. I have been too ashamed.”
“But she will. There’s that horrible story of my having crippled Leggett. Some of the newspapers said I killed him, and that story still survives. She couldn’t miss that!”
Rem sighed hopelessly.
“She doesn’t read the newspaper—it isn’t permitted in Quaker families, you know, until it has been expurgated. Then it has lost all interest for her, and her mind will fix itself only upon the holes where the awful things have been excised. Once or twice I have taken the precaution to let her see what they were in my copy. But not often—not before I myself have been over them. For, say what you please, her Quaker innocence is the loveliest attribute she will ever have—the worldliness I shall teach her is not a half compensation—and she shall not be spoiled—she shall always be a Quaker. Yes, sir—but I shall teach her just enough worldliness to make some one—not you—want her enough to—Oh, I haven’t mentioned you. I have been ashamed to do it. Therefore, she is assailable.”
“Huh! She flew away the moment I came.”
“Fear of your fascinations.”