Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/159

 one bit for getting wild if you let 'em down like that. This ain't Zenith, where you can go yelling around expecting to get things done in two minutes!"

Through a fortnight, while the Norbloms agonized over deciding to do what they had long ago decided to do, Martin waited, unable to begin work. Until he should open a certified and recognizable office, most of the village did not regard him as a competent physician but as "that son-in-law of Andy Tozer's." In the fortnight he was called only once: for the sick-headache of Miss Agnes Ingleblad, aunt and housekeeper of a Ingleblad the barber. He was delighted, till Bert Tozer explained:

"Oh, so she called you in, eh? She's always doctorin' around. There ain't a thing the matter with her, but she's always trying out the latest stunt. Last time it was a fellow that come through here selling pills and liniments out of a Ford, and the time before that it was a faith-healer, crazy loon up here at Dutchman's Forge, and then for quite a spell she doctored with an osteopath in Leopolis—though I tell you there's something to this osteopathy—they cure a lot of folks that you regular docs can't seem to find out what's the matter with 'em, don't you think so?"

Martin remarked that he did not think so.

"Oh, you docs!" Bert crowed in his most jocund manner, for Bert could be very joky and bright. "You're all alike, especially when you're just out of school and think you know it all. You can't see any good in chiropractic or electric belts or bone-setters or anything, because they take so many good dollars away from you."

Then behold the Dr. Martin Arrowsmith who had once infuriated Angus Duer and Irving Watters by his sarcasm on medical standards upholding to a lewdly grinning Bert Tozer the benevolence and scientific knowledge of all doctors; proclaiming that no medicine had ever (at least by any Winnemac graduate) been prescribed in vain nor any operation needlessly performed.

He saw a good deal of Bert now. He sat about the bank, hoping to be called on a case, his fingers itching for bandages. Ada Quist came in with frequency and Bert laid aside his figuring to be coy with her:

"You got to be careful what you even think about, when the doc is here, Ade. He's been telling me what a whale of a lot of neurology and all that mind-reading stuff he knows. How