Markham visited the doctor, proud on his way of the swing of his legs again. "It was a pretty swift cure," he said, "and I suppose you ought to have some of the credit for it."
The doctor advanced the proposition that he ought to have, with nature, not some, but all of the credit.
"There's a difference in patients," he remarked, "and when you began to improve you 'hustled.' But my treatment, those prescriptions, offset the poison—call it microbes, if you wish—in your blood and gave your physique and constitution and general health a chance. The darky does not figure."
There was a good-natured debate, Markham being now reasonable, but no conclusion. What did cure Markham? Was it the physician's treatment, the course with the prize-fighter, or the effect upon Markham's mind of the fact that the latter was all from Her? Will some one say?
A week or two after his complete recovery, Markham asked the doctor what course to follow to avoid a possible recurrence at any time of what he had endured. The physician was very much in earnest in his answer. "Be careful of what you eat and drink," he said, "and careful of yourself in a general way aside from that. Do not take risks of colds. Be, in short, a man of sense regarding your physical welfare."
"But I'm going into the woods of Northern Michigan on a shooting and fishing trip," was the answer, "and we've got to sleep on the ground, and to a certainty, we'll fall into some creek or lake on an average of once a day; and, old man, we've room for another in the party."
"I'll come!" said the doctor.
But what cured Markham?