Mrs. Grey watched this tendency in her baby with uneasiness. This home-loving and essentially womanly woman believed that ambitions of Prue's sort never brought happiness to the woman whom they drew after their ignis fatuus attractions, but rather substituted heartburnings and envy for peace, holding out an unattainable gaol of triumph, which would prove empty and unsatisfying even should it be reached. Mrs. Grey was an old-fashioned woman, believing that love, not applause, good deeds, not brilliant ones rounded and filled a woman's life.
"Cricket on the hearth?" suggested Bruce, replying to Rob's statement that she had saved a life that day.
"No; Tobias, I set his leg and bandaged it. Aunt Azraella thought that he must die," said Rob. "You're not the only surgeon of this sextette."
"Tobias?" repeated Bruce in the dark. "Don't know the gentleman. Where was Dr. Fairbairn, and why should he die from a broken leg?"
"Don't you remember Aunt Azraella's cat, Tobias?" cried Rob. Adding, as Bruce uttered an enlightened: "Oh!" "Aunt Azraella says that she doesn't want Tobias chloroformed because Elvira would grieve for him, but I believe she has a sneaking liking for the old cat herself; she drew a long breath of relief when I repaired him and uttered my professional opinion that he would pull through. Aunt Azraella doesn't seem quite strong, and it makes her gentler. Do you suppose that it would be your duty as a physician to impair the health of positive and vigorous ladies, like Aunt Azraella?"
"'Health chiefly keeps an atheist in the dark,'" quoted Bruce promptly. "I don't remember seeing that question of medical ethics raised, but it opens up a wide field for argument. I think a great many people would be softer and sweeter for having less cast-iron nerves, and less self-sufficiency of health."
"Well, I think there are not a great many, but very few in America who suffer from cast-iron nerves," said Rob with a sigh. "I'm only beginning to realize what a horrible lot of misery there is in the world. I can understand your choice of a profession, Bruce."
"You always had medicinal qualities—" Bruce began.
"You mean medical," corrected Prue from her pose before Bartlemy near by.
"Do I?" asked Bruce. "I can perfectly understand my choice in every way, Rob. As to the misery, there is more than you will ever realize, I hope. But on the other hand as human beings grow better it will lessen. The higher the civilization the greater the capacity to suffer, but the stronger the sense of the rights of the weak and of our kinship and obligations even to 'our brother, the wolf,' as St. Francis used to say. His sanctity was great enough to reveal to him how endless was the chain of love—they hadn't found it out in his day."