“Don’t trouble mamma,” said Grace, waking up to the fact that there was embarrassment in meeting this trifling charge.  “I have money;” and she opened her dainty purse for the purpose—­a silvery alligator thing with golden clasps and her monogram on it in jewels, and took out the money needed.  Her sisters and brother had a glimpse of bills and silver in that well-filled purse.

“Jiminy!” said Robbie to James.  “Did you see the money she’s got?  Why, father never had as much as that at once.”

Which was very true.  How should a hard-working country doctor have money to carry about when his bills were hard to collect, when anyway he never kept books, and when his family, what with feeding and clothing and schooling expenses, cost more every year than he could possibly earn?  Poor Doctor Wainwright!  He was growing old and bent under the load of care and expense he had to carry.  While he couldn’t collect his own bills, because it is unprofessional for a doctor to dun, people did not hesitate to dun him.  All this day, as he drove from house to house, over the weary miles, up hill and down, there was a song in his heart.  He was a sanguine man.  A little bit of hope went a long way in encouraging this good doctor, and he felt sure that better days would dawn for him now that Grace had come home.  A less hopeful temperament would have been apt to see rocks in the way, the girl having been so differently educated from the others, and accustomed to luxuries which they had never known.  Not so her father.  He saw everything in rose-color.

As Doctor Wainwright toward evening turned his horse’s head homeward he was rudely stopped on a street corner by a red-faced, red-bearded man, who presented him with a bill.  The man grumbled out sullenly, with a scowl on his face: 

“Doctor Wainwright, I’m sorry to bother you, but this bill has been standing a long time.  It will accommodate me very much if you can let me have something on account next Monday.  I’ve got engagements to meet—­pressing engagements, sir.”

“I’ll do my best, Potter,” said the doctor.  Where he was to get any money by Monday he did not know, but, as Potter said, the money was due.  He thrust the bill into his coat pocket and drove on, half his pleasure in again seeing his child clouded by this encounter.  Pulling his gray mustache, the world growing dark as the sun went down, the father’s spirits sank to zero.  He had peeped at the bill.  It was larger than he had supposed, as bills are apt to be.  Two hundred dollars!  And he couldn’t borrow, and there was nothing more to mortgage.  And Grace’s coming back had led him to sanction the purchase of a new piano, to be paid for by instalments.  The piano had been seen going home a few days before, and every creditor the doctor had, seeing its progress, had been quick to put in his claim, reasoning very naturally that if Doctor Wainwright could afford to buy a new piano, he could equally afford to settle his old debts, and must be urged to do so.