here and there a
reader in the fate of different members of our company. Here are our
pretty Delilah and our Doctor provided for. We may take it for granted
that it will not be very long that the young couple will have to wait;
for, as I have told you all, the Doctor is certainly getting into
business, and bids fair to have a thriving practice before he saddles his
nose with an eyeglass and begins to think of a pair of spectacles. So
that part of our little domestic drama is over, and we can only wish the
pair that is to be all manner of blessings consistent with a reasonable
amount of health in the community on whose ailings must depend their
prosperity.

All our thoughts are now concentrated on the relation existing between
Number Five and the Tutor. That there is some profound instinctive
impulse which is drawing them closer together no one who watches them can
for a moment doubt. There are two principles of attraction which bring
different natures together: that in which the two natures closely
resemble each other, and that in which one is complementary of the other.
In the first case, they coalesce, as do two drops of water or of mercury,
and become intimately blended as soon as they touch; in the other, they
rush together as an acid and an alkali unite, predestined from eternity
to find all they most needed in each other. What is the condition of
things in the growing intimacy of Number Five and the Tutor? He is many
years her junior, as we know. Both of them look that fact squarely in the
face. The presumption is against the union of two persons under these
circumstances. Presumptions are strong obstacles against any result we
wish to attain, but half our work in life is to overcome them. A great
many results look in the distance like six-foot walls, and when we get
nearer prove to be only five-foot hurdles, to be leaped over or knocked
down. Twenty years from now she may be a vigorous and active old woman,
and he a middle-aged, half-worn-out invalid, like so many overworked
scholars. Everything depends on the number of drops of the elixir vitae
which Nature mingled in the nourishment she administered to the embryo
before it tasted its mother's milk. Think of Cleopatra, the bewitching
old mischief-maker; think of Ninon de L'Enclos, whose own son fell
desperately in love with her, not knowing the relation in which she stood
to him; think of Dr. Johnson's friend, Mrs. Thrale, afterward Mrs.
Piozzi, who at the age o