“If they only had a little common sense,” the Doctor grumbled, “there wouldn’t be any dilemma.”
“Which?” I asked. “Your poor family or the charities?”
“Both,” was the answer. “If the Ebsteins had any common sense, they would not be in this plight; and if the charities had any, the family would have been helped long ago. The rarest thing in the world is common sense.”
“How did you find them?” I asked; I always liked to ask this. The Doctor was continually taking care of people in trouble, and as continually trying to conceal the fact. “It is simply for practice,” she always said. “My visits among the poor are only a kind of clinic. If it weren’t for the interests of science, I’d never set foot in the slums again.”
“Did you ever find among them any of the valuable abnormal cases you are looking for?” I asked once.
“No,” she answered, “but I might. I am always expecting to.”
“How did you discover the Ebsteins?” I asked. It was a new charity “case,” and I took a professional interest in it.
“I had a patient in Snow Street, in a basement,—an old woman with rheumatism.”
“What interesting scientific discoveries you must be making there,” I murmured. “Chronic rheumatism is no doubt very instructive.”
The Doctor looked severe.