# ‘Are you going to keep this house on?’ she asked.

‘I hardly know’ he said. ‘I’m very likely going to Canada.’

‘To Canada? What for?’

‘Well,’ he said slowly, ‘to try the life.’

‘But which life?’

‘There are various things, farming, or mining or lumbering’. I don’t mind much what it is.’

‘And is that what you want?’

‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘till I’ve tried.’

# The doctor himself was ill. He sat up and the lady entered his consulting room.

‘My husband is very ill!’ she sobbed. ‘For mercy’s sake come quickly . . . Make haste!’

‘What is it?’ said the doctor, drowsily.

‘Come along’, please, this very minute, or he may die.

‘I’ll come tomorrow,' said the doctor, in a very low voice.

‘No! come now!’ she pleaded. ‘He has typhus.’

‘I’ve only just come in,’ said the doctor. ‘All day today, and for two days before that, I've been with typhus patients, and most of the night too. I simply can’t get up and go out again!’

‘But you must, doctor, you must,’ the lady moaned.

‘I have taken typhus myself,’ said the doctor. My temperature is dangerously high.’ He lay down again.

‘This is beyond everything . . . I’m in a fever, and you won’t understand. Leave me alone!’

But the doctor went in the end.

# A lady went with two little girls into a shoemaker’s hut.

‘I want a pair of soft shoes made for each of these little girls,’ she said.

‘Very well, madam’, said the shoemaker. ‘I have never made such small shoes before, but it can be done.’

The lady took one of the girls, who was lame, on to her lap, and said: ‘The children are twins, and take the same size of shoes. You can take their measures from this little girl. Make one special shoe for her lame foot, and three ordinary ones.’ The shoemaker took the measures, and then asked: ‘How is it she is lame, such a pretty little girl. Was she born lame?’

‘No,’ said the lady, ‘She fell, and was run over by a carriage, and her leg was broken.’

‘Poor little dear!’ said the shoemaker.