“You expected to see a mess of salt and vinegar prepared for his diet?”

“I should prepare something quite different—-milk and sweetbreads, I think.”

“To soften him?  Do you hear, mother?  Take advice.”

Caroline-—or Carey, as she had begged to be called-—blushed, and drew back half-alarmed, as she always was when the Doctor caught up any of the little bits of fun that fell so shyly and demurely from her, as they were evoked by the more congenial atmosphere.

It was a great pleasure to him and to his mother to show her some of the many things she had never seen, watch her enjoyment, and elicit whether the reality agreed with her previous imaginations.  Mr. Brownlow used to make time to take the two ladies out, or to drop in on them at some exhibition, checking the flow of half-droll, half-intelligent remarks for a moment, and then encouraging it again, while both enjoyed that most amusing thing, the fresh simplicity of a grown-up, clever child.

“How will you ever bear to go back again?” said Carey’s school-friend, Clara Cartwright, now a governess, whom Mrs. Brownlow had, with some suppressed growls from her son, invited to share their one day’s country-outing under the horse-chestnut trees of Richmond.

“Oh!  I shall have it all to take back with me,” was the answer, as Carey toyed with the burnished celandine stars in her lap.

“I should never dare to think of it!  I should dread the contrast!”

“Oh no!” said Carey.  “It is like a blind person who has once seen, you know.  It will be always warm about my heart to know there are such people.”

Mrs. Brownlow happened to overhear this little colloquy while her son was gone to look for the carriage, and there was something in the bright unrepining tone that filled her eyes with tears, more especially as the little creature still looked very fragile-—even at the end of a month.  She was so tired out with her day of almost rapturous enjoyment that Mrs. Brownlow would not let her come down stairs again, but made her go at once to bed, in spite of a feeble protest against losing one evening.

“And I am afraid that is a recall,” said Mrs. Brownlow, seeing a letter directed to Miss Allen on the side-table.  “I will not give it to her to-night, poor little dear; I really don’t know how to send her back.”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” said the Doctor, leaning over the fire, which he was vigorously stirring.

“You don’t think her strong enough?  If so, I am very glad,” said the mother, in a delighted voice.  “Eh, Joe?” as there was a pause; and as he replaced the poker, he looked up to her with a colour scarcely to be accounted for by the fire, and she ended in an odd, startled, yet not displeased tone, “It is that-—is it?”

“Yes, mother, it is that,” said Joe, laughing a little, in his relief that the plunge was made.  “I don’t see that we could do better for your happiness or mine.”