homelike and scrupulously clean, but evidences of disrepair were abundant. The bases of the four round pillars supporting the roof of the porch which ran across the front were rotting, the steps creaked ominously under Perry's feet and the faded yellow paint was blistered and cracked.
Dr. Hull only rented the house, and the owner, since the retail business district had almost surrounded it and he expected to soon sell, was extremely chary of repairs. Perry's father had lived there so long that he hated the thought of moving. He had grown very fond of the place, a fondness shared to a lesser extent by Mrs. Hull and scarcely at all by Perry. But Dr. Hull's motives in remaining there were not wholly sentimental. He had slowly and arduously accumulated a fair practice and, now that the town was over-supplied with physicians, he feared that a change of location would lose him his clients. Dr. Hull was not an old man, but he was forty-odd and rather of the old-style, and shook his head over the pushing methods of the newcomers. Perry assured him that it would be a good thing if he did lose some of his present practice, since half of it brought him little or no money, and that in a better location he could secure a better class of patients. But Perry wasn't very certain
of this, while his mother, who sighed secretly for
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