What could this “awfully jolly” Doctor be thinking of to make him cry?  He was thinking of a grave-stone in the churchyard close by, and of a story connected with this grave-stone which was known to everybody in the place who was old enough to remember it.  This story has nothing to do with the present story, so it ought not to be told.

And yet it has to do with the Doctor, and is very short, so it shall be put in, after all.

THE STORY OF A GRAVE-STONE.

One early spring morning, about twenty years before, a man going to his work at sunrise through the churchyard, stopped by a flat stone which he had lately helped to lay down.  The day before, a name had been cut on it, which he stayed to read; and below the name some one had scrawled a few words in pencil, which he read also—­Pitifully behold the sorrows of our hearts.  On the stone lay a pencil, and a few feet from it lay the Doctor, face downwards, as he had lain all night, with the hoar frost on his black hair.

Ah! these grave-stones (they were ugly things in those days; not the light, hopeful, pretty crosses we set up now), how they seem remorselessly to imprison and keep our dear dead friends away from us!  And yet they do not lie with a feather’s weight upon the souls that are gone, while god only knows how heavily they press upon the souls that are left behind.  Did the spirit whose body was with the dead, stand that morning by the body whose spirit was with the dead, and pity him?  Let us only talk about what we know.

After this it was said that the Doctor had got a fever, and was dying, but he got better of it; and then that he was out of his mind, but he got better of that, and came out looking much as usual, except that his hair never seemed quite so black again, as if a little of that night’s hoar frost still remained.  And no further misfortune happened to him that I ever heard of; and as time went on he grew a beard, and got stout, and kept a German poodle, and gave tea-parties to other people’s children.  As to the grave-stone story, whatever it was to him at the end of twenty years, it was a great convenience to his friends; for when he said anything they didn’t agree with, or did anything they couldn’t understand, or didn’t say or do what was expected of him, what could be easier or more conclusive than to shake one’s head and say,

“The fact is, our Doctor has been a little odd, ever since—!”

THE DOCTOR’S TEA-PARTY.

There is one great advantage attendant upon invitations to tea with a doctor.  No objections can be raised on the score of health.  It is obvious that it must be fine enough to go out when the Doctor asks you, and that his tea-cakes may be eaten with perfect impunity.