I + 

Martin found in Dr. Pickerbaugh a generous chief. He was eager to have Martin invent and clamor about his own Causes and Movements. His scientific knowledge was rather thinner than that of the visiting nurses, but he had little jealousy, and he demanded of Martin only the belief that a rapid and noisy moving from place to place is the means (and possibly the end) of Progress. + 

In a two-family house on Social Hill, which is not a hill but a slight swelling in the plain, Martin and Leora found an upper floor. There was a simple pleasantness in these continuous lawns, these wide maple-shaded streets, and a joy in freedom from the peering whispers of Wheatsylvania. + 

Suddenly they were being courted by the Nice Society of Nautilus. + 

A few days after their arrival Martin was summoned to the telephone to hear a masculine voice rasping: + 

“Hello. Martin? I bet you can’t guess who this is!” + 

Martin, very busy, restrained his desire to observe, “You win⁠—g’ by!” and he buzzed, with the cordiality suitable to a new Assistant Director: + 

“No, I’m afraid I can’t.” + 

“Well, make a guess.” + 

“Oh⁠—Clif Clawson?” + 

“Nope. Say, I see you’re looking fine. Oh, I guess I’ve got you guessing this time! Go on! Have another try!” + 

The stenographer was waiting to take letters, and Martin had not yet learned to become impersonal and indifferent in her presence. He said with a perceptible tartness: + 

“Oh, I suppose it’s President Wilson. Look here⁠—” + 

“Well, Mart, it’s Irve Watters! What do you know about that!” + 

Apparently the jester expected large gratification, but it took ten seconds for Martin to remember who Irving Watters might be. Then he had it: Watters, the appalling normal medical student whose faith in the good, the true, the profitable, had annoyed him at Digamma Pi. He made his response as hearty as he could: + 

“Well, well, what you doing here, Irve?” + 

“Why, I’m settled here. Been here ever since internship. And got a nice little practice, too. Look, Mart, Mrs. Watters and I want you and your wife⁠—I believe you are married, aren’t you?⁠—to come up to the house for dinner, tomorrow evening, and I’ll put you onto all the local slants.” + 

The dread of Watters’s patronage enabled Martin to lie vigorously: + 

“Awfully sorry⁠—awfully sorry⁠—got a date for tomorrow evening and the next evening.” + 

“Then come have lunch with me tomorrow at the Elks’ Club, and you and your wife take dinner with us Sunday noon.” + 

Hopelessly, “I don’t think I can make it for lunch but⁠—Well, we’ll dine with you Sunday.” + 

It is one of the major tragedies that nothing is more discomforting than the hearty affection of the Old Friends who never were friends. Martin’s imaginative dismay at being caught here by Watters was not lessened when Leora and he reluctantly appeared on Sunday at one-thirty and were by a fury of Old Friendship dragged back into the days of Digamma Pi. + 

Watters’s house was new, and furnished in a highly built-in and leaded-glass manner. He had in three years of practice already become didactic and incredibly married; he had put on weight and infallibility; and he had learned many new things about which to be dull. Having been graduated a year earlier than Martin and having married an almost rich wife, he was kind and hospitable with an emphasis which aroused a desire to do homicide. His conversation was a series of maxims and admonitions: + 

“If you stay with the Department of Public Health for a couple of years and take care to meet the right people, you’ll be able to go into very lucrative practice here. It’s a fine town⁠—prosperous⁠—so few dead beats. + 

“You want to join the country club and take up golf. Best opportunity in the world to meet the substantial citizens. I’ve picked up more than one high-class patient there. + 

“Pickerbaugh is a good active man and a fine booster but he’s got a bad socialistic tendency. These clinics⁠—outrageous⁠—the people that go to them that can afford to pay! Pauperize people. Now this may startle you⁠—oh, you had a lot of crank notions when you were in school, but you aren’t the only one that does some thinking for himself!⁠—sometimes I believe it’d be better for the general health situation if there weren’t any public health departments at all, because they get a lot of people into the habit of going to free clinics instead of to private physicians, and cut down the earnings of the doctors and reduce their number, so there are less of us to keep a watchful eye on sickness. + 

“I guess by this time you’ve gotten over the funny ideas you used to have about being practical⁠—‘commercialism’ you used to call it. You can see now that you’ve got to support your wife and family, and if you don’t, nobody else is going to. + 

“Any time you want a straight tip about people here, you just come to me. Pickerbaugh is a crank⁠—he won’t give you the right dope⁠—the people you want to tie up with are the good, solid, conservative, successful businessmen.” + 

Then Mrs. Watters had her turn. She was meaty with advice, being the daughter of a prosperous person, none other than Mr. S. A. Peaseley, the manufacturer of the Daisy Manure Spreader. + 

“You haven’t any children?” she sobbed at Leora. “Oh, you must! Irving and I have two, and you don’t know what an interest they are to us, and they keep us so young.” + 

Martin and Leora looked at each other pitifully. + 

After dinner, Irving insisted on their recalling the “good times we used to have together at the dear old U.” He took no denial. “You always want to make folks think you’re eccentric, Mart. You pretend you haven’t any college patriotism, but I know better⁠—I know you’re showing off⁠—you admire the old place and our profs just as much as anybody. Maybe I know you better than you do yourself! Come on, now; let’s give a long cheer and sing ‘Winnemac, Mother of Brawny Men.’ ” + 

And, “Don’t be silly; of course you’re going to sing,” said Mrs. Watters, as she marched to the piano, with which she dealt in a firm manner. + 

When they had politely labored through the fried chicken and brick ice cream, through the maxims, gurglings and memories, Martin and Leora went forth and spoke in tongues: + 

“Pickerbaugh must be a saint, if Watters roasts him. I begin to believe he has sense enough to come in when it rains.” + 

In their common misery they forgot that they had been agitated by a girl named Orchid. + 