well, I'll be down again before I start out this morning."
I know the Doctor so well that I can tell you pretty accurately what were the other domestic duties that had already received her attention. She has a most wonderful kitchen. She had glanced through it to see that the sink was clean and that each shining pot and pan was hanging on its own hook. She had given the order for the day to the butcher. She had planned the dinner for the evening, probably with a soup to utilise the remnants of Sunday's roast. Then—I have known it to happen—some one perhaps called, "O, say, dear, here's a button coming loose. Could you, 'er, just spare the time?'
Well, ultimately she stands in the doorway of her office with her calm, pleasant "This way, please" to the first patient, and turns her attention to the diagnosis, we will say, of an appendicitis case. Meanwhile, down the front staircase a carefree gentleman has passed on his way to the doorway of the other office. He is the doctor whose sign is in the other front window of this same brown stone residence. What has he been doing in the early morning hours before taking up his professional duties for the day? His sole employment has been the reading of the morning newspaper! Katherine never interrupts him in that. It is one of the ways she has been such a successful wife. She learned the first year of their marriage how important he considered concentration.
