Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/76

 him. There was no man in Wallbridge more in demand than John Sheldon. And no man more modest and self-effacing. Once he had overheard Charlotte, his wife, early in their married career, refer to him to an acquaintance as 'the doctor.' 'As if,' he had laughed at her, 'there was only one doctor in town.' So after that she usually said just John. All of his friends said just John too. Many of them felt for him a deep sense of gratitude for help he had given them through some ordeal or other in the past, but they seldom expressed it. He disliked praise for doing what was his job, he said, and at the least sign of an encomium, always laughed and changed the subject, launching quickly into the last funny story he had heard.

There were many 'specialists' now in Wallbridge, as everywhere else. But John Sheldon was 'a general man,' and insisted on calling himself such. He had heard Charlotte at a dinner-party tell a stranger once that her husband was a diagnostician. 'No such thing!' he had denied, 'just an old-fashioned family doc.' He was always belittling himself, and calling himself uncomplimentary names, if he had a chance.

He bore few of the signs of success. Unlike the specialists he could always be gotten at some hour during his elastic twenty-four. And he never seemed to be in a hurry, often spending an extra