“Oh, well, your grandmother and your aunts used to make antimacassars and wall-pockets and paper flowers,” he ruminated.  “Why shouldn’t you make poetry if you feel like it?”

“You are to be pitied, Richard,” said Miss Martha, with crushing charity.  “Such a disposition!  And the older you grow the worse it gets.”

“Confound it, Martha!—­”

“I do,” said she.

Alicia looked at Richard with impersonal eyes.  She looked at the ruffled center of culture.

“Don’t pay any attention to him, Miss Martha,” she said, with a charming smile.  “Your poem is very pretty, and he knows it.”

“He means well,” said Miss Martha, resignedly.

“Now, you look here, Martha!” the doctor said angrily, “I won’t have anybody telling me to my face I mean well.  You might as well call me a fool outright.”

“You are far from being a fool, Richard.  And you do mean well.  Everybody knows that.”

He turned appealingly to his dear Leetchy, and received his first lesson in Domestic Science.

“Miss Martha is right, Richard,” she decided.

“Leetchy,” the doctor asked, when the mollified Miss Hopkins had departed, “why did Martha go off grinning?”

“How should I know?” wondered Alicia, innocently.  Then she looked at him with Irish eyes:  “Have you had your lunch, dear?” she asked.

“Lunch?” He looked bewildered.

“Because I’m going to fix Sophy’s lunch now, and you may have yours with her, if you like.  I love to wait on you, Richard,” she added, and a beautiful color flooded her face.

He caught his breath.  When she went back to the house, his eyes followed her adoringly.

“Sophy,” he said, huskily, “what does she see in me?  Do you think I’m good enough for her, Sophy?”

“I think you are quite good enough even for Alicia.”

When he had gone, Alicia sat with her head against my knees.  Of late a touching gravity, a sweet seriousness, had settled upon her.  Her love for the big doctor was singularly clear-eyed and far-seeing.  There were going to be times when every ounce of skill, tact, patience, love itself, would be called upon, for the reins must be gossamer-light, invisible, but always firm and sure, that should guide and tone down so impatient and fiery a nature as his.  It was very easy to love him; it wasn’t always going to be easy to live with him, and Alicia knew it.  But she also knew, with a faith beyond all failing, that this was her high, destined, heaven-ordained job.

“Sophy darlin’, I’m deplorably young, am I not?” she sighed.

“You’ll get over it.”

“Do you think I’ll make him a good wife, Sophy?”

“I am absolutely certain,” I said, “that you’ll make him a good husband.  Which is far more important.”

Alicia hugged my knees, and laughed.  Then, seeing Mr. Nicholas Jelnik approaching, she scrambled to her feet, picked up the tray of empty dishes, and went back to the house.