The horse always knew when the reins changed hands. He disregarded the proxy, kept his own gait, picked the best of the road, and turned out for passing vehicles. The boy now grasped the lines with unexpected positiveness; and he leaned over and looked up under the rim of his father's hat: —

"I hope the doctor they employ will give them the wrong medicines," he confided. "I hope the last one of them will have many a rattling good bellyache for their meanness to you!"

Then more years for father and son, each finding the other out.

And now finally on the morning of that twenty-fourth day of December, the father was to witness a scene in the drama of his life as amazingly performed by his son – illustrating what a little actor can do when he undertakes to imitate an old actor to whom he is most loyal.

That morning after breakfast the apt pupil in Life's School had been sent for, and when he had entered the library, his father was sitting before the fire, idle. The buggy was not waiting outside; the hat and overcoat and gloves were nowhere in sight; and he had not gotten ready his satchel which took the place of the saddlebags of earlier generations when the country doctor travelled around on horseback and carried the honey of physic packed at his thighs – like a wingless, befattened bumblebee. This morning it looked as though all the sick were well at last; it was a sound if wicked world; and nothing was left for a physician but to be happy in it – without a profession – and without wickedness.

He threw himself into his father's impulsively opened arms, and was heaved high into his lap. Though he was growing rather mature for laps now; he was beginning to speculate about having something of a lap of his own; quite a good deal of a lap.

"How is the children's epidemic to-day?"

"Never you mind about the children's epidemic! I'll take care of the children's epidemic," repeated the doctor, pulling the long-faced, autumn-faced prodigy of all questions between his knees and looking him over with secret solicitude. "We'll not talk about sick children, but about two well children – thanked be the Father of all children! So you and Elsie are going away to help celebrate a Christmas Tree."

"Yes; but when are you going to have a Christmas Tree of our own?"

Now, that subject had two prongs, and the doctor seized the prong that did not pierce family affairs – did not pierce him. He settled down to the subject with splendid warmth and heartiness: —

"Well, let me see! You may have your first Christmas Tree as soon as you are old enough to commence to do things for other people; as soon as you can receive into your head the smallest hard pill of an idea about your duty to millions and millions and millions of your fellow medicine takers. Can you understand that?"

"Gracious! That would be a big pill – larger than my head! I don't see what it has to do with one miserable little dead pine tree!"

The doctor roared.

"It has this to do with one miserable dead pine tree: don't you know yet that Christmas Trees are in memory of a boy who was once exactly your age and height – and perhaps with your appetite – and with just as many eyes and possibly even more questions? The boy grew up to be a man. The man became a teacher. The teacher became a neighborhood doctor. The neighborhood doctor became the greatest physician of the world – and he never took a fee!"

"Ah, yes! But he wasn't a better doctor than you are, was he? If he'd come into this neighborhood and tried to practise, you'd soon have ousted him, wouldn't you, with your doses and soups and jellies?"

"Humph!" grunted the doctor with a wry twist of the mouth; "I suppose I would! Yes; undoubtedly I'd have ousted him! He could never have competed with me in my practice; never! But we won't try that hard little pill of an idea any more. We'll drop the subject of Christmas Trees for one more year. Perhaps by that time you can take the pill as a powder! So! I hear you are going to attend a dancing party; we'll talk about the party. And you are going over there to stay all night. I wish I were going. I wish I were going over there to stay all night," reiterated the man, with an outrush of solemn tenderness that reached back through vain years, through so many parched, unfilled years.

"I wish so, too," cried the boy, instantly burying his face on his father's coat-sleeve, then lifting it again and looking at him with a guilty flush which the doctor did not observe.

"Oh, do you! We won't say anything more about that, though I'm glad you'd like to have me along. Now then; go and have a good time! And take long steps and large mouthfuls! And you might do well to remember that a boy's stomach is not a birdnest to be lined with candy eggs."

"I think candy eggs would make a very good lining, better than real eggs; and about half the time you're trying to line me with them, aren't you? With all the sulphur in them! And I do hate sulphur, and I have always hated it since the boy at my desk in school wore a bag of it around his neck under his shirt to keep off diseases. My! how he smelt – worse than contagion! Candy eggs would make a very good lining; even the regular soldiers get candy in their rations now. And they don't have to eat new-laid eggs of mornings! Think of an army having to win a hard-fought battle on soft-boiled eggs! They don't have to do that, do they?"

"They do not!" said the doctor. "They positively do not! But we won't say anything more about eggs – saccharine or sulphurous. What are you going to do at the party?"

"I am going to dance."

"Alone? O dear! All alone? You'd better go skate on the ice! Not all alone?"

"I should say not! With my girl, of course."

"That's better, much better. And then what?"

"I am going to promenade, with my girl on my arm."

"On both arms, did you say?"

"No; on one arm."

"Which?"

"Either."

"That sounds natural! (Heart action regular; brain unclouded; temperature normal.) And then? What next?"

"I'm going to take the darling in to supper."

"Hold on! Not so fast! Suppose there isn't any supper – for the darling."

"Don't say that! It would nearly kill me! Don't you suppose there'll be any supper?"

"I'm afraid there will be. Well, after the darling has had her fatal supper? (Of course you won't want any!) What then?"

"What else is there to do?"

"You don't look as innocent as you imagine!"

"You don't have to confess what you'd like to do, do you? Would you have told your father?"

"I don't think I would."

"Then I won't tell you."

"Then you needn't! I don't wish to know – only it must not be on the cheek! Remember, you are no son of mine if it's on the cheek!"

"I thought I heard you say that got people into trouble."

"Maybe I did. I ought to have said it if I didn't; and it seems to be the kind of trouble that you are trying to get into. (Temperature rising but still normal. Respiration deeper. All symptoms favorable. No further bulletins deemed necessary.) Well, then? Where were we?"

"Anyhow, I've never thought of cheeks when I've thought of that; I thought cheeks were for chewing."

"Guardian Powers of our erring reason! Where did you get that idea – if sanity can call it an idea?"

"Watching our cows."

The doctor laughed till tears ran down his face.

"You can't learn much about kissing by watching anybody's cows, Governor," he said, wiping the tears away. "Not about human kissing. You must begin to direct your attention to an animal not so meek and drivable. You must learn to consider, my son, that hornless wonder and terror of the world who forever grazes but never ruminates!"

For years, in talking with a mind too young wholly to understand, he had enjoyed the play of his own mind. He knew only too well that there are few or none with whom a physician may dare have his sportive fling at his fellow-creatures, at life in general. From a listener who never sat in harsh judgment and who would never miscarry his random words, he had upon occasion derived incalculable relief.

"Anyhow, I have learned that cows have the new American way of chewing; so they never get indigestion, do they?"

"If they do, they cannot voice their symptoms in my mummied ears," said the doctor, who often seemed to himself to have been listening to hue and cry for medicine since the days of Thotmes. "However, we won't say anything further about that! What else are you going to do over there? This can't possibly be all!"

"To-night we children are going to sit up until midnight, to see whether the animals bellow and roar and make all kinds of noise on Christmas Eve. We know they don't, but we're going to prove they don't!"

"Where did you pick up that notion?"

"Where did you pick it up when you were a boy?"

"I fail to remember," admitted the doctor with mock dignity, damaged in his logic but recalling the child legend that on the Night of the Nativity universal nature was in sympathy with the miracle. All sentient creatures were wakeful and stirring, and sent forth the chorus of their cries in stables and barns – paying their tribute to the Divine in the Manger and proclaiming their brotherhood with Him who was to bring into the world a new gospel for them also.

"I don't know where I got that," he repeated. "Well, after the animals bellow and roar and make all kinds of noise, then what?"

"There isn't but one thing more; but that is best of all!"

"You don't say! Out with it!"

"That is our secret."

The new decision of tone demonstrated that another stage had been reached in their intercourse. The boy had withdrawn his confidence; he had entered the ranks of his own generation and had taken his confidence with him. Personally, also, he had shut the gate of his mind and the gate was guarded by a will; henceforth it was to be opened by permission of the guard. Something in their lives was abruptly ended; the father felt like ending the talk.

"Very well, then; we won't say anything more about the secret. And now you had better run along."

"But I don't want to run along just yet. It will be a long time before I see you again; have you thought of that?"

He reversed his position so as to face the fire; and he crossed his feet out beyond the promontory of the doctor's knees and folded his arms on the rampart of those enfolding arms.

For a few moments there was intimate silence. Then he inquired: —

"How old must a boy be to ask a girl?"

A flame more tender and humorous burned in the doctor's eyes.

"Ask her what?"

"Ask her nothing! Ask her!"

"You mean tell her, don't you? Not ask her, my friend and relative; tell her!"

"Well, ask her and tell her, too; they go together!"

"Is it possible! I'm always glad to learn!"

"Then, how old must he be?"

"Well, if you stand in need of the opinion of an experienced physician, as soon as he learns to speak would be about the right period! That would be the safest age! The patient would then have leisure to consider his case before being affected by the disease. You could have time to get singed and step away gradually instead of being roasted alive all at once. Does that sound hard?"

"Not very! Do you love a girl longer if you tell her or if you don't tell her?"

"I'm afraid nobody has ever tried both ways! Suppose you try both, and let us have the benefit of your experience."

"Well, then, if you love, do you love forever?"

The doctor laughed nervously and tightened his arms around the innocent.

"Nobody has lived forever yet – nobody knows!"

"But forever while you live – do you love as long as that?"

"You wouldn't know until you were dead and then it would be too late to report. But aren't you doing a good deal of hard fighting this morning, – on soft-boiled eggs, – though I think the victory is yours, General, the victory is truly and honestly yours!"

"I can't stop thinking, can I? You don't expect me to stop thinking, do you, when I'm just beginning really to think?"

"Very well, then, we won't say anything more about thinking."

"Then do you or don't you?"

"Now, what are you trying to talk about?" demanded the doctor angrily, and as if on instant guard. A new hatred seemed coming to life in him; there was a burning flash of it in his eyes.

"Just between ourselves – suppose that when I am a man and after I have been married to Elizabeth awhile, I get tired of her and want a little change. And I fell in love with another man's wife and dared not tell her, because if I did I might get a bullet through me; would I love the other man's wife more because I could not tell her, or would I love her more because I told her and risked the bullet?"

Pall-like silence draped the room, thick, awful silence. The father lifted his son from his lap to the floor, and turned him squarely around and looked him in the eyes imperiously. Many a time with some such screened but piercing power he, as a doctor, had scrutinized the faces of children to see whether they were aware that some vast tragedy of life was in the room with them. To keep them from knowing had often been his main care; seeing them know had been life's last pity; young children finding out the tragedies of their parents with one another – so many kinds of tragedies.

"You had better go now," he urged gently. Then an idea clamped his brain in its vise.

"And remember: while you are over there, you must try to behave with your best manners because you are going to stay in the house of a great lady. All the questions that you want to ask, ask me when you come back. Ask me!"

The boy standing before his father said with a strange quietness and stubbornness, probing him deeply through the eyes: —

"You haven't answered my last question yet, have you?"

"Not yet," said the doctor, with strange quietness also.

The boy had never before heard that tone from his father.

"It's sad being a doctor, isn't it?" he suggested, studying his father's expression.

"What do you know about sad? Who told you anything about sad?" muttered the doctor with new sadness now added to old sadness.

"Nobody had to tell me! I knew without being told."

"Run along now."

"Now I'll walk along, but I won't run along. I'll walk away from you, but I won't run away from you."

He wandered across the room, and stood with his hand reluctantly turning the knob. Then with a long, silent look at his father – he closed the door between them.