Her emphasis had in it a certain agitation that caught the doctor's eye. "Your out-of-door life is calculated to keep you well," he said.
Miss Harriet got up and thrust the rabbit back into the pouch at her side. "Of course; and, anyhow, I'm not the sick kind. Imagine me shut up between four walls! I should be like Sterne's starling. Do you remember?—'I want to get out, I want to get out.' No, there's nothing the matter with me. Absolutely nothing."
She did look very well, the big, brown woman, towering up at the road-side, with her rifle in her hand and the good color in her cheeks and lips. Yet her eyes had a worn look, William thought. "Pain somewhere," said the doctor to himself.
"You know, I don't believe in your pills and truck," she insisted, frowning.
"Of course not," he assured her easily. "Come, now, Miss Harriet, what's wrong?"
"Nothing, I tell you," she said, sharply; and then, with impatient brevity, she spoke of some special discomfort which had annoyed her. "It began about six months ago."
"Probably you've taken cold," William King said, and then he asked a question or two. She answered with irritable flippancy:
"Now don't put on airs, Willy. There's no use trying to impress me; I know you. Remember, you were in my Sunday-school class."
"Why didn't you make a better boy of me, then? You had your chance. Miss Harriet, would you mind coming into my office and just letting me look you over? Come, now, why shouldn't I get a job out of you for once? Here you tackle me on the road-side and get an opinion for nothing."
She chuckled, but retorted that she hated doctors and their offices. "I'm not that Drayton cat," she said, "always wanting a doctor to fuss over me. No, you can give me a pill right here—though I haven't a bit of faith in it."