"'For goodness' sakes,' I says, 'don't call him that. You know how he hates it.'
"'But I do like to say it,' Mis' Uppers insists, wistful. 'He's the only professor I ever knew.'
"'Me either,' I says—and I knew how she felt.
"Just the same, we was getting to like Mr. Insley too much to call him that if he didn't want it, or even 'doctor' that was more common, though over to Indian Mound College, half way between us and the City, he is one or both, and I dunno but his name tapers off with capital letters, same as some.
"'I just came over here to work,' he told us when we first see him. 'I don't profess anything. And "doctor" means teacher, you know, and I'm just learning things. Must you have a formal title for me? Won't Mr. do?'
"Most of the College called him just 'Insley,' friendly and approving, and dating back to his foot-ball days, and except when we was speaking to him, we commonly got to calling him that too. A couple of months before he'd come over from the College with a letter of introduction from one of the faculty to Postmaster Silas Sykes, that is an alderman and our professional leading citizen. The letter from the College said that we could use Mr. Insley in any local civic work we happened to be doing.
"'Civic work?' Silas says to him, thoughtful. 'You mean shuttin' up saloons an' like that?'
"'Not necessarily,' he told him. 'Just work with folks, you know.'
"'Well-a, settin' out bushes?' Silas asks.
"'Whatever you're most interested in, Mr. Sykes,' says he. 'Isn't there some organization that's doing things here?'