Page:Conflict (1927).pdf/77

 fifteen minutes or so with a patient to talk and swap stories, although it might mean no lunch.

There was a stuffed trout hanging on the rather dingy walls of his office. He had caught it twenty years ago. He had a passion for fishing. Some day he meant to go fishing again, when he could afford it. He had several expensive children to bring up, and one thing John Sheldon didn't know, was how to make money. The specialists, who came over from Boston, were always calling him in to relieve symptoms while they were considering causes. Often the symptoms under his treatment (though he insisted it was under Nature's) would disappear, and the cause would never be discovered at all. But still he couldn't bring himself to charge over five dollars a call, in spite of the specialists' five hundred.

Dora stared at the one stuffed trout while she waited for John to finish a conversation over the telephone dealing with the details of a baby's digestive activities. She had been waiting for five minutes. It must be a very stupid woman on the other end of the line. John Sheldon had to repeat everything he said about three times. But judging from the tone of his voice, he might have been chatting about books and plays with the woman at an afternoon tea-table. Charlotte often told him he didn't have a bit of a professional manner.

When finally he hung up the receiver (he had al-