The Doctor threw back his head and chuckled:
“Pennsylvania Dutch for three generations–I knew old Herman Müller’s father–before I came West–when he used to sell kraut and cheese around Vincennes before the war, and Herman’s grandfather came from Pennsylvania.”
“I thought so,” sniffed Mrs. Nesbit. And then she added: “Doctor, that girl is a minx.”
“Yes, my dear,” chirped the Doctor. “Yes, she’s a minx; 131but this isn’t the open season for minxes, so we must let her go. And,” he added after a pause, during which he read the wedding notice carefully, “she may put a brace under Henry–the blessed Lord knows Henry will need something, though he’s done mighty well for a year–only twice in eighteen months. Poor fellow–poor fellow!” mused the Doctor. Mrs. Nesbit blinked at her husband for a minute in sputtering indignation. Then she exclaimed: “Brace under Henry!” And to make it more emphatic, repeated it and then exploded: “The cat’s foot–brace for Henry, indeed–that piece!”
And Mrs. Nesbit stalked out of the room, brought back a little dress–a very minute dress–she was making and sat rocking almost imperceptibly while her husband read. Finally, after a calming interval, she said in a more amiable tone, “Doctor Nesbit, if you’ve cut up all the women you claim to have dissected in medical school, you know precious little about what’s in them, if you get fooled in that Margaret woman.”
“The only kind we ever cut up,” returned the Doctor in a mild, conciliatory treble, “were perfect–all Satterthwaites.”
And when the Doctor fell back to his book, Mrs. Nesbit spent some time reflecting upon the virtues of her liege lord and wondering how such a paragon ever came from so common a State as Indiana, where so far as any one ever knew there was never a family in the whole commonwealth, and the entire population as she understood it carried potatoes in their pockets to keep away rheumatism.
The evening wore away and Dr. and Mrs. Nesbit were alone by the ashes in the smoldering fire in the grate. They were about to go up stairs when the Doctor, who had been looking absent-mindedly into the embers, began meditating aloud about local politics while his wife sewed. His meditation concerned a certain trade between the city and Daniel Sands wherein the city parted with its stock in Sands’s public utilities with a face value of something like a million dollars. The stocks were to go to Mr. Sands, while the city received therefor a ten-acre tract east of town on the Wahoo, called Sands Park. After bursting into the 132Doctor’s political nocturne rather suddenly and violently with her feminine disapproval, Mrs. Nesbit sat rocking, and finally she exclaimed: “Good Lord, Jim Nesbit, I wish I was a man.”
“I’ve long suspected it, my dear,” piped her husband,
“Oh, it isn’t that–not your politics,” retorted Mrs. Nesbit, “though that made me think of it. Do you know what else old Dan Sands is doing?”