“I did notice her,” said David emphatically, darting a keen side glance at his friend.  “I noticed her most particularly and critically—­for someone whispered her name behind me and coupled it with the exceedingly interesting information that Miss Campion was supposed to be the future Mrs. Eric Marshall.  Whereupon I stared at her with all my eyes.”

“There is no truth in that report,” said Eric in a tone of annoyance.  “Agnes and I are the best of friends and nothing more.  I like and admire her more than any woman I know; but if the future Mrs. Eric Marshall exists in the flesh I haven’t met her yet.  I haven’t even started out to look for her—­and don’t intend to for some years to come.  I have something else to think of,” he concluded, in a tone of contempt, for which anyone might have known he would be punished sometime if Cupid were not deaf as well as blind.

“You’ll meet the lady of the future some day,” said David dryly.  “And in spite of your scorn I venture to predict that if fate doesn’t bring her before long you’ll very soon start out to look for her.  A word of advice, oh, son of your mother.  When you go courting take your common sense with you.”

“Do you think I shall be likely to leave it behind?” asked Eric amusedly.

“Well, I mistrust you,” said David, sagely wagging his head.  “The Lowland Scotch part of you is all right, but there’s a Celtic streak in you, from that little Highland grandmother of yours, and when a man has that there’s never any knowing where it will break out, or what dance it will lead him, especially when it comes to this love-making business.  You are just as likely as not to lose your head over some little fool or shrew for the sake of her outward favour and make yourself miserable for life.  When you pick you a wife please remember that I shall reserve the right to pass a candid opinion on her.”

“Pass all the opinions you like, but it is my opinion, and mine only, which will matter in the long run,” retorted Eric.

“Confound you, yes, you stubborn offshoot of a stubborn breed,” growled David, looking at him affectionately.  “I know that, and that is why I’ll never feel at ease about you until I see you married to the right sort of a girl.  She’s not hard to find.  Nine out of ten girls in this country of ours are fit for kings’ palaces.  But the tenth always has to be reckoned with.”

“You are as bad as Clever Alice in the fairy tale who worried over the future of her unborn children,” protested Eric.

“Clever Alice has been very unjustly laughed at,” said David gravely.  “We doctors know that.  Perhaps she overdid the worrying business a little, but she was perfectly right in principle.  If people worried a little more about their unborn children—­at least, to the extent of providing a proper heritage, physically, mentally, and morally, for them—­and then stopped worrying about them after they are born, this world would be a very much pleasanter place to live in, and the human race would make more progress in a generation than it has done in recorded history.”