His daughter spoke feelingly of the
impossibility of restraining his charitable zeal. He attended the poor
for nothing. He rose at any hour and went forth in any weather in
response to the call of suffering.
"That's what he says a doctor's duties are," she said. "It isn't a
profession to make money with, it's a profession for helping people and
curing them. You yourself don't count, it's only what you do that
does. Why, my father had a very large practice, but he made only just
enough to keep us."
Of all she had said this seemed to the listener the best worth hearing.
The doctor now mounted to the top of the highest pedestal David's
admiration could supply. Here was one of the compensations with which
life keeps the balances even. Joe had died and left him friendless,
and while the ache was still sharp, this stranger and his daughter had
come to soothe his pain, perhaps, in the course of time, to conjure it
quite away.
Early in the preceding winter the doctor had been forced to decide on
the step he had been long contemplating. An attack of congestion of
the lungs developed consumption in his weakened constitution.
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