Page:The Fruit of the Tree (Wharton 1907).djvu/174

Rh “Long Island?” She drew her brows together in puzzled retrospection. “ I wonder if it could have been Stephen Wyant? I heard he had taken over his uncle’s practice somewhere near New York.”

“Wyant—that’s the name. He’s the doctor at Clifton, the nearest town to the Amhersts’ place. Little Cicely had a cold—Cicely Westmore, you know—a small cousin of mine, by the way—” he switched a rose-branch loftily out of her path, explaining, as she moved on, that Cicely was the daughter of Mrs. Amherst’s ﬁrst marriage to Richard Westmore. “That’s the way I happened to see this Dr. Wyant. Bessy—Mrs. Amherst—asked him to stop to luncheon, after he’d seen the kid. He seems rather a discontented sort of a chap—grumbling at not having a New York practice. I should have thought he had rather a snug berth, down there at Lynbrook, with all those swells to dose.”

Justine smiled. “Dr. Wyant is ambitious, and swells don’t have as interesting diseases as poor people. One gets tired of giving them bread pills for imaginary ailments. But Dr. Wyant is not strong himself and I fancy a country practice is better for him than hard work in town.”

“You think him clever though, do you?” Westy enquired absently. He was already bored with the subject of the Long Island doctor, and vexed at the lack of perception that led his companion to show more [ 158 ]