Page:Arrowsmith - Sinclair Lewis.pdf/272

 a demanding, infuriating yawp which made Martin cry, "For God's sake go out and make 'em quit that, will you, and let me alone! I've got to work, I told you!"

Tredgold stared a moment. "I certainly shall! I'm not accustomed to force my attentions on people. Pardon me for disturbing you!"

By the time Martin sulkily felt that he must apologize, the car was gone. Next day and all the week, he waited for Tredgold to telephone, and Tredgold waited for him to telephone, and they fell into a circle of dislike. Leora and Clara Tredgold saw each other once or twice, but they were uncomfortable, and a fortnight later, when the most prominent physician in town dined with the Tredgolds and attacked Martin as a bumptious and narrow-visioned young man, both the Tredgolds listened and agreed.

Opposition to Martin developed all at once.

Various physicians were against him, not only because of the enlarged clinics, but because he rarely asked their help and never their advice. Mayor Pugh considered him tactless. Klopchuk and F. X. Jordan were assailing him as crooked. The reporters disliked him for his secrecy and occasional bruskness. And the Group had ceased to defend him. Of all these forces Martin was more or less aware, and behind them he fancied that doubtful business men, sellers of impure ice-cream and milk, owners of unsanitary shops and dirty tenements, men who had always hated Pickerbaugh but who had feared to attack him because of his popularity, were gathering to destroy the entire Department of Public Health He appreciated Pickerbaugh in those days, and loved soldierwise the Department.

There came from Mayor Pugh a hint that he would save trouble by resigning. He would not resign. Neither would he go to the citizens begging for support. He did his work, and leaned on Leora's assurance, and tried to ignore his detractors. He could not.

News-items and three-line editorial squibs dug at his tyranny, his ignorance, his callowness. An old woman died after treatment at the clinic, and the coroner hinted that it had been the fault of "our almighty health-officer's pet cub assistant." Somewhere arose the name "the Schoolboy Czar" for Martin, and it stuck.

In the gossip at luncheon clubs, in discussions at the