“Why?” asked Molly.  “Are you the kind of doctor they call in when there’s nothing the matter?”

She did not mean to be sarcastic, but she seemed to be, and Walter, of course, like a properly sensitive soul, was hurt.

“I must go,” he said, positively, ignoring the thrust.

“But you say there is nothing the matter with the boy,” suggested Molly.

“I’m going just the same,” said Walter, and he went.

Molly played on at the piano until she heard the front door slam, and then she rose up and went to the window.  Walter had gone and was out of sight.  Then, sad to say, she became philosophical.  It doesn’t really pay for girls to become philosophical, but Molly did not know that, and she began a course of reasoning.

“He knows he isn’t needed, but he goes,” she said to herself, as she gazed dejectedly out of the window at the gaslamps on the other side of the street.  “And he will of course charge the Hubbards for his services, admitting, however, that his services are nothing.  That is not conscientious—­it is not professional.  He is not practising for the love of his profession, but for the love of money.  I am disappointed in him—­and we were having such a pleasant time, too!”

So she ran on as she sat there in the window-seat looking out upon the dreary street; and you may be sure that the commingling of her ideals and her disappointments and her sense of loneliness did not help Walter’s case in the least, and that when they met the next time her manner towards him was what some persons term “sniffy,” which was a manner Walter could not and would not abide.  Hence a marked coolness arose between the two, which by degrees became so intensified that at about the time when Mrs. Upton was expected to be called in to assist at a wedding, she was stunned by the information that “all was over between them.”  “Just think of that, Henry,” the good match-maker cried, wrathfully.  “All is over between them, and Molly pretends she is glad of it.”

“Made for each other too!” ejaculated Upton, with a mock air of sorrow.  “What was the matter?”

“I can’t make out exactly,” observed Mrs. Upton.  “Molly told me all about it, and it struck me as a merely silly lovers’ quarrel, but she won’t hear of a reconciliation.  She says she finds she was mistaken in him.  I wish you’d find out Walter’s version of it.”

“I respectfully refuse, my dear Mrs. Upton,” returned Henry.  “I’m not a partner in your enterprise, and if you get a misfit couple returned on your hands it is your lookout, not mine.  Pity, isn’t it, that you can’t manage matters like a tailor?  Suit of clothes is made for me, I try it on, don’t like it, send it back and have it changed to fit.  If you could make a few alterations now in Molly—­”

“Henry, you are flippant,” asserted Mrs. Upton.  “There’s nothing the matter with Molly—­not the least little thing; and Walter ought to be ashamed of himself to give her up, and I’m going to see that he doesn’t.  I believe a law ought to be made, anyhow, requiring engaged persons who want to break off to go into court and show cause why they shouldn’t be enjoined from so doing.”