Chapter 41

Patients rapidly succeeded one another in the chair that faced the window. There were confirmed invalids who were really healthy men and women, and certain others who came in smilingly to talk about the weather and the newest Russian Opera, who bore upon their faces the unmistakable stamp of mortal disease. The wife or the husband, the father or the mother had worried for nothing.... Would the Doctor prescribe a little tonic to buck them, or the surgeon alleviate a little trouble of the local kind? Really nothi…