Evening Republican, Volume 21, Number 285, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 December 1918 — Prescribing for Paul [ARTICLE]

Prescribing for Paul

By JANE OSBORN

Dedham Join the colors and made hUrTto© 1 astigmatic bin conntrv This secondary feeling of discontent hr mufti was frankly due a. • * • At. a .» • « yooq *•/I rwl O Q fllllitt fl gvfl i f*n ij OX* Ttit> community of Mardon was witn- , -a j ! Harden was doing its best to create a “desirable home atmosphere” for the boys in khaki. Meantime men who still wore gray cheviot, or bine serge, negligible. ’You don’t ruind not having any sugar •on your baked apple,” Paul was assured sweetly by his mother at breakfast. “We are making apple pies for the canteen this morning, and those apples were so tart that we had to use all the sugar we had on hand.” And when Paul, his mouth in a pucker, put his hand out for the sugar bowl for his coffee his mother passed him a nice little Jug of sirup, assuring him that he was going to enjoy using that in place of sugar because they had used practically their entire quota of cut sugar and they would henceforth have it only when they had soldier boys for dinner.

.. “The boys just love cake,” his sister assured him, “and it does seem a pity to use any substitute in it.” Then •with moisture in her eyes—“ They’ll be In France so soon the least we can ■do is to let them have our wheat,” and Paul gulped down a soggy bullet of a corn muffin and sipped cautiously the insipid mixture of his coffee. Occasionally, however, Paul was assured that he was a “perfect dear.” That was after he had signed a check for his mother for the Red Cross, or when he had paid the bill for a hundred pounds of candy for a soldier spread at the canteen. He was a “nice boy,” too, sometimes, and was assured that he was one by some of the girls who had once rather vied with each other to meet him on the tennis court or golf links. But to earn that title he bad to sit for an hour or more on someone’s front porch holding hanks of yarn or winding them from the backs of chairs, while he was actually deserted for a man in khaki. “If you should happen to get anything the matter with you,” his sister told him one morning when he was feeling especially dejected over the cook’s most recent attempt at. war muffins, “I do wish you’d let Doctor Pratt have a try at you—not, of course, that I want you to have anything—but If you should.” And on inquiry as to who Doctor Pratt was he was Informed that Doctor Pratt'was Kate Pratt —that Doctor Peters, being a skilled surgeon, had volunteered for the war and that Kate Pratt, his niece, just from medical college, was going to handle his practice. “And she has quite a iQt of money, so she is going to give all her fees to the Red Cross or to the canteen or something. That is confidential, of course, but I have it on good authority. So it would be awfully nice if you did get something the matter with you to go to her. She’s been quite successful. She set Priscilla’s chow’s leg the other day and the blessed dog didn’t even whimper, and she fixed one of the soldiers’ ankles at the service club dance. He was dancing with that fat Baldwin girl and she tripped him and lie strained his ankle and Doctor Pratt fixed him—but of course she didn’t charge for that" , To Paul there was something odious In the idea of letting a woman doctor prescribe for him, but he kept his opinion to himself and merely made sou&e comment on Priscilla’s chow, and hoped that he was much better. Meantime he had a new worry. He was wondering how he could get his socks darned, for his mother and sister knit soldier socks now to the disregard of the darning bag. At first he had bought new socks as he needed them, but he had now accumulated three or four dozen pairs and it didn’t seem the best solution. He was wondering whether he could arrange with some seamstress to mend them without letting his mother know—he didn’t want her to feel Offended, of course.

So Paul’s spirits and his appetite waned, and before long his- mother and sister noticed, a lagging note in bls step and a stoop to his shoulders that had not been there bef6re. He neglected the unsweetened apples and the coffee with corn sirup and they decided he had no appetite. “Well, any way, It will be a case for Doctor Kate,” his sister told him, and because Paul was actually becoming alarmed over hie. own dejected condition and because there was no other doctor In the place, Paul made a special appointment for consultation and went to see her in old Doctor Peters’ office. Paul had realized before that there would be difficulties In consulting a woman physician, but the difficulties were different from those he bad expected. For Doctor Kate proved to be a most radiant and bewitching

I T» . At _ St J| ; pretext of meeting her mother. And Doctor Kate watched with satisfaction that was not all professional as he accepted his fifth muffin—they were made with as much wheat as the Hoover regulation allowed —and watched him eat the dessert to make which she and her mother had foregone sugar for two days. Doctor Kate had a wonderful way of finding things out, for Paul himself never told her about his socks. But before many weeks had passed he was actually bringing his socks stealthily to Doctor Kate’s mother, who assured him she had a perfect passion for darning, and since her own boy had gone to the front she hacLhad none to do. Then Kate prescribed some sort of electrical treatment for her patient that had- to be administered every morning in her office before breakfast, and she also assured him that the good effects of the treatment would be offset if he went out afterward without eating. Having breakfast with Doctor Kate and her mother therefore became part of the treatment. And Paul recovered rapidly. He regained the lost pounds, and presently his case was spoken of as a feather in the cap of Doctor Kpte Pratt. Gossip had it that he was in an actual decline when she took him in hand. No one knew Just what the treatment had been, but it had required many, many' visits, and the fee that was handed over to the Red Cross as a result was enough to buy all the yarn that Marden women could knit up in a year. * - And the funny thing was that when Paul sued for Doctor Kate’s heart and hand and gained them both Marden women folk were a little peeved, even to Paul’s"own mother and sister. “It’s always that way with eligible men,” was the comment. “The girls in the home town can pet them and pamper them for years, but the first nice girl'from out of town is the one they marry." For Marden failed to see how pitifully susceptible Paul Dedham had become as a result of the neglect he had suffered. _ ,