turally on it without public comment. The
other letter renewed the pang at common property being at an end. 'No,
Mab,' she said, taking the little dog into her lap, 'we shall none of
us hear a bit of it! But at least it is a comfort that this business
is over! You needn't creep under sofas now, there's nobody to tread
upon your dainty little paws. What is to be done, Mab, to get out of a
savage humour--except thinking how good-natured poor Tom is!'

There was not much sign of savage humour in the face that was lifted up
as Dr. May came in from the hospital, and sitting down by his daughter,
put his arm round her. 'So there's another bird flown,' he said. 'We
shall soon have the old nest to ourselves, Ethel.'

'The Daisy is not going just yet,' said Ethel, stroking back the thin
flying flakes over his temples. 'If we may believe her, never!'

'Ah! she will be off before we can look round,' said the Doctor; 'when
once the trick of marrying gets among one's girls, there's no end to
it, as long as they last out.'

'Nor to one's boys going out into the world,' said Ethel: both of them
talking as if she had been his wife, rather than one of these fly-away
younglings herself.

'Ah! well,' he said, 'it's very pretty while it lasts, and one keeps
the creatures; but after all, one doesn't rear them for one's own
pleasure. That only comes by the way of their chance good-will to one.'

'For shame, Doctor!' said Ethel, pretending to shake him by the collar.

'I was thinking,' he added, 'that we must not require too much. People
must have their day, and in their own fashion; and I wish you would
tell Tom--I've no patience to do it myself--that I don't mean to hamper
him. As long as it is a right line, he may take whichever he pleases,
and I'll do my best to set him forward in it; but it is a pity--'

'Perhaps a few years of travelling, or of a professorship, might give
him time to think differently,' said Ethel.

'Not he,' said the Doctor; 'the more a man lives in the world, the more
he depends on it. Where is the boy? is he gone without vouchsafing a
good-bye?'

'Oh no, he has taken pity on Annie and Caroline Cheviot's famine of
croquet, and gone with them to the gardens.'

'A spice of flirtation never comes amiss to him.'

'There, that's the way!' said Ethel, half-saucily, half-caressingly;
'that poor fellow never can do right! Isn't it the very thing to keep
him away from home, that we all may steal a hors