“I?” said Dr. Strong, affectionately tucking the old lady’s arm under his. “To you the honors of war. I only squelched a quack. You taught Bairds-town’s self-coddling womanhood a lesson that will go down the generations.”
“What I want to know,” said the Mayor, advancing to shake hands with Mrs. Sharpless, “is this: what’s a fussybuddy?”
“A fussybuddy,” instructed Grandma Sharpless wisely, “is a woman who catches a stomach-ache from a patent-medicine almanac. What I want to know, Tom Allen, is what you had against the man. I seemed to get an inkling that you didn’t exactly like him.”
“He’s forgotten me,” chuckled the Mayor, “but I haven’t forgotten him. Fifteen years ago he came along here horse-doctoring and poisoned a perfectly good mare for me. He won’t try to poison this town again in a hurry. You finished him, Mrs. Sharpless, you and Dr. Strong.”
“What I want to know,” said the Health Master, “is how poor old Mr. Huddleston feels about that contribution, now.”
A month later he found out. Traveling by trolley one evening, he felt a hand on his shoulder, and turned to face Professor Graham Gray.
“No hard feelings, I hope,” said the quack with superb urbanity. “All in the way of business, I take it. I’d have done the same to you, if you’d come butting in on my trade. Say, but that old lady was a Tartar! She cooked my goose in Bairdstown. For all that, I got an unsolicited testimonial from there two weeks ago that’s a wonder. Anonymous, too. Not a word of writing with it to tell who the grateful patient might be.”
“What was it?” asked Dr. Strong with polite interest.
“A twenty-dollar bill. Now, what do you think of that?”
When Dr. Strong spoke again—and the Great Gray Benefactor has always regarded this as the most inconsequential reply he ever received to a plain question—it was after a long and thoughtful pause.