Dr. Helen’s laugh at this brought Dr. Harlow over to her; and Archie joined the other group.
“Go on, Hannah,” said Dr. Helen, seeing Hannah hesitate a little. “Dr. Harlow will be interested in your analysis of my prescription.”
“I wasn’t going to analyse it any more, but I was just thinking that whichever you meant, they were really all of them the same thing Miss Lyndesay meant when she talked to us about being laetus, I mean, laetae sorte mea, I mean nostra!”
Dr. Harlow chuckled softly, but Dr. Helen put a kiss on the sweet mouth with the earnest curve.
“When you finish school, Hannah,” suggested Dr. Harlow, “you can come out here and help us in the office, making up prescriptions for spiritually 245 afflicted folk–we’ve all got to take up that line nowadays, you know–and handling the Latin end of the business. Helen never was strong on Latin. She translated ‘E pluribus unum’ as ‘One too many’ when she was young!”
The boys got up to leave, and the doctor’s raillery was checked, but Hannah pondered over it as she went up to bed. About midnight she heard him closing the doors for the night, and, slipping her bright kimono over her night-dress, she stole out into the hall and half-way down stairs.
“Dr. Harlow,” she called softly, and the doctor looked up to see her leaning over the banister, her curly brown braids falling forward.
“I know now why you laughed,” she said. “It should be sortibus. Laetae sortibus nostra! O, dear no, nostris. I guess I’d rather do the surgery, and let you attend to the Latin!”
“Perhaps it would be wise!” said Dr. Harlow.