you.”

The ugly old parrot was dear after all.

“I wonder,” she soliloquized, taking slow stitches, “if having lost faith in a person, it can ever be brought back again? If he should come and say that he has been wrong—”

The gate clicked, in an instant she was on her feet, had he come to confess himself in the wrong? Oh, how she would forgive and forget! And trust him?

The tall thin figure had a stoop in its shoulders, Ralph Towne was erect; the overcoat was carelessly worn, revealing a threadbare vest and loose black necktie; it was only Dr. Lake, Dr. Greyson’s new partner.

She had been drawn to him the first moment of their meeting. As soon as he had left after his first call, she had said to Dinah: “I never felt so towards any one before; I shall be so sorry for him to go away where I can not follow him; I want to put my arms around him and coax him to be good.”

“How do you know that he isn’t good?”

“I do know it. I do not know how I know. He hasn’t any ‘women folks’ either. He is as sensitive to every change in one’s voice as the thermometer is to changes in the atmosphere. I never saw any one like him before. When I make a collection of curiosities I find in Human Nature, I shall certainly take him for one of the rarest and most interesting. It would not take two minutes to convert him from the inquisitor to the martyr at the stake. I feel as if he were a little child crying with a thorn in his finger, and he had no mother to take it out.”

“He was only here fifteen minutes and he was as full of fun as he could be; he ran down the piazza, and he whistled while he was unhitching his horse, and began to sing as he drove off. Oh, you are so funny! you hear a man talk slang—he is equal to Sue Greyson for that—ask mother about her cough, tell a funny story, and then think his heart is breaking with a thorn in his finger.”

Tessa would not laugh. “I want him to stay; I don’t want ever to lose him.”

“Isn’t he ugly? Such a tall, square forehead. Did you ever see such a forehead?”

“My first thought of him was, ‘oh, how homely you are.’”

But that first thought never recurred; she was too much attracted by his rapid, easy utterance and sensitive voice to remember his plain face and careless attire.

She resumed her sewing with a new train of thought and had forgotten Dr. Lake’s entrance, when Bridget came to the door with a request from Mrs Wadsworth; opening the door of the sitting-room, she found her mother leaning back in her sewing chair with a plaintive and childish expression, and Dr. Lake playing with her spools of silk, sitting in a careless attitude of perfect grace at her side. Tessa was sorry to have the picture spoiled by his rising to greet her.

“Ralph Towne, M.D.,” he was replying, “he was born with a gold spoon in his pretty mouth! It would have been better for him if it had been silver-plated like mine. Quit? He’s a mummy, a cloister, a tomb! I do not quarrel with any man’s calling,” he continued, winding the black silk around his fingers, “circumstances have made me a physician. Calling! It means something only when circumstances have nothing to do with it.”

“Read the lives of the world’s best workers,” said Tessa.

“A glass of water, an empty glass, and a spoon, if you please, Miss Tessa. Do you remember—I have forgotten his name—but I assure you that I am not concocting the story—he rose to eminence in the medical profession, several rounds higher in the ladder of fame than I expect to climb—and his mind was drawn towards medicine when he was a youngster by the display of gold lace that his father’s physician flung into the eyes of the world. Gold lace made that boy a famous doctor.” Tessa brought the glasses and the water; in a leisurely manner he counted a certain number of spoonfuls of water into the empty glass. “I’m a commonplace fellow! I’m not one of the world’s workers! Neither is Ralph Towne! To have an easy life and not do much harm is the most I hope for in this world; as for the next, who knows anything about that? I say, ‘Your tongue, please,’ and drop medicine and make powders all day long for my bread and butter. I have no faith in medicine.”

“Then you are an impostor! You shall never see even the tip of my tongue.”

He laughed as if it were such fun to laugh.

“What is medicine to you?” he asked after counting forty drops from a vial into the water. “A woman in a crowd once touched the border of a certain garment and through faith was healed; so I take the thing that He has ordained for healing, all created things are His garment; through His garment I come nearer to Him and am healed.”

Mrs. Wadsworth looked annoyed. “So I may take cream instead of cod liver oil, doctor.”

“If you prefer it,” he answered carelessly. “Miss Tessa, you are a Mystic.”

Tessa liked to watch the motion of his fingers; his hands were small, shapely, and every movement of them struck her as an apt quotation. She was learning as much of himself from his hands as from his face.

“Now I must go and scold Felix Harrison,” he said rising. “A teaspoonful in a wineglass of water three times a day, Mrs. Wadsworth! He had an attack last night and cheated me out of my dreams. Do you know him, Mystic? If he do not leave off brain work he will make a fool of himself. A gold spoon would not have hurt him.”

He turned suddenly facing Tessa as they stood alone in the hall; he was seriousness itself now; a look of care had settled over his features. He was not a “big boy,” he was a man, undisciplined, it is true, but a man to whom life meant many disappointments and hard work.

“What is the matter with you? Do you ever go to sleep? If you do not give up thinking and take to nonsense and novels, I shall be called to take you through a nervous fever. Mind, I am in earnest. Don’t spend too much time in washing the disciples’ feet either; it is very charming to be St. Theresa, but you are not strong enough.”

“Thank you. I am well. Is Sue at home?”

“No, she stays at Old Place until her knight departs. He had better go soon or I shall meet him in the woods. Alone. At midnight. What is he trifling with her for? Does he intend to marry her?”

Was this his thorn? Could he love a shallow girl like Sue Greyson?

“Ought we to talk about her?” she asked gently.

“You are her friend. You are older than she is. She will not listen to me. Her father takes no more care of her than he does of you.”

“She has not cared for me lately.”

“She does care for you. You must pull her through this. Towne made a fool of a girl I know—she is married, though; it didn’t smash her affections very deep; married rich, too. But it will be a pity for Sue to have a heartache all for nix; she is a guileless piece; I would be sorry for her to have a disappointment.”

“Motherless children are always taken care of,” she answered trying to speak lightly.

In the twilight she sat alone at the parlor grate; it was beginning to rain; through the mist the lights in kitchen and parlor opposite were gleaming; Dinah and Bridget were laughing in the basement; a quick, hard cough, then her father’s voice in a concerned tone sounded through the stillness.

Why was she feeling lonely and as if her heart would break, unless somebody should come, or unless somebody gave her something, or unless something happened? In story-books, when one was in such a mood, in a misty twilight something always happened.

Why were there not such