True, one city doctor, a visiting friend of the Pennimans' family physician, had once gone carefully over him, punching, prodding, listening, to announce that nothing ailed the invalid; which showed, as the judge had said to his face, that he was nothing but an impudent young squirt.

He had never revealed this parody of a diagnosis to his anxious family, who always believed the city doctor had found something deadly that might at any time carry off the patient sufferer.
The judge was also bitter about Christian Science, and could easily be led to expose its falsity.

He would wittily say it wasn't Christian and wasn't science; merely the chuckleheadedness of a lot of women.

This because a local adept of the cult had told him, and--what was worse--told Mrs.Penniman and Winona, that if he didn't quit thinking he was an invalid pretty soon he would really have something the matter with him.
And he had incurred another offensive diagnosis: Old Doc Purdy, the medical examiner, whose sworn testimony had years before procured the judge his pension as a Civil War veteran, became brutal about it.

Said Purdy: "I had to think up some things that would get the old cuss his money and dummed if he didn't take it all serious and think he did have 'em!" The judge had been obliged to abandon all thoughts of a career.