The Doctor was very angry.  “Very well, madam,” said he.  “In that case I can only say that I have the honor to wish you a very good morning.”  He raised his broad straw hat and strode away up the gravel path, while the widow looked after him with twinkling eyes.  She was surprised herself to find that she liked the Doctor better the more masculine and aggressive he became.  It was unreasonable and against all principle, and yet so it was and no argument could mend the matter.

Very hot and angry, the Doctor retired into his room and sat down to read his paper.  Ida had retired, and the distant wails of the bugle showed that she was upstairs in her boudoir.  Clara sat opposite to him with her exasperating charts and her blue book.  The Doctor glanced at her and his eyes remained fixed in astonishment upon the front of her skirt.

“My dear Clara,” he cried, “you have torn your skirt!”

His daughter laughed and smoothed out her frock.  To his horror he saw the red plush of the chair where the dress ought to have been.  “It is all torn!” he cried.  “What have you done?”

“My dear papa!” said she, “what do you know about the mysteries of ladies’ dress?  This is a divided skirt.”

Then he saw that it was indeed so arranged, and that his daughter was clad in a sort of loose, extremely long knickerbockers.

“It will be so convenient for my sea-boots,” she explained.

Her father shook his head sadly.  “Your dear mother would not have liked it, Clara,” said he.

For a moment the conspiracy was upon the point of collapsing.  There was something in the gentleness of his rebuke, and in his appeal to her mother, which brought the tears to her eyes, and in another instant she would have been kneeling beside him with everything confessed, when the door flew open and her sister Ida came bounding into the room.  She wore a short grey skirt, like that of Mrs. Westmacott, and she held it up in each hand and danced about among the furniture.

“I feel quite the Gaiety girl!” she cried.  “How delicious it must be to be upon the stage!  You can’t think how nice this dress is, papa.  One feels so free in it.  And isn’t Clara charming?”

“Go to your room this instant and take it off!” thundered the Doctor.  “I call it highly improper, and no daughter of mine shall wear it.”

“Papa!  Improper!  Why, it is the exact model of Mrs. Westmacott’s.”

“I say it is improper.  And yours also, Clara!  Your conduct is really outrageous.  You drive me out of the house.  I am going to my club in town.  I have no comfort or peace of mind in my own house.  I will stand it no longer.  I may be late to-night—­I shall go to the British Medical meeting.  But when I return I shall hope to find that you have reconsidered your conduct, and that you have shaken yourself clear of the pernicious influences which have recently made such an alteration in your conduct.”  He seized his hat, slammed the dining-room door, and a few minutes later they heard the crash of the big front gate.