of Carelessness had brought about
this result.

John Hampden saw a good deal of Margaret Shirley and her cousin that
winter at the meetings of the literary society, at choir practice, and
in Margaret's own home, where they often discussed the poems and essays
they were reading.

Youth has a frank and sometimes harsh way of passing judgment upon
people. John had decided the first evening he met her that Celia Kirke
was a frivolous girl, but when he got to know her better, he found that
she could be as sensible as Margaret herself when occasion required it.

They had confessed to one another what each one's particular tyrant was,
and had agreed to help each other to suppress him. Of course they had a
good deal of fun about it, but under it all there was a general feeling
that it was a serious matter they had undertaken.

John really began to feel that he was getting to be master of his own
fields at last. He attended to his duties at the drug store with such
punctilious care that his employer, Mr. Wyatt, nodded approval more than
once.

After all, John might become a safe druggist yet, if he didn't suffer
himself to lapse into his old ways. He did not stop to dream, as
formerly, when compounding pills, and he washed all his dingy bottles so
thoroughly that they began to shine like cut glass.

"He would be a credit to the business," said old Mr. Wyatt, who always
spoke of his business as if it were spelled with a capital B, and
thought it the very finest business in the world for a man to be in.

One afternoon in March Doctor Pratt came hurriedly into the store and
said to Mr. Wyatt:

"Put up half a dozen of these powders, will you, Wyatt? Here's the full
prescription. Squire Shirley has got one of his acute attacks of
neuralgia again, and my medicine-chest was empty. I'll call for them in
fifteen minutes."

Then the overworked little doctor jumped into his gig, and was off like
a flash.

"You'd better do it, John," said Mr. Wyatt. "I can't see in this poor
light."

"Very well, sir," said John.

And, as he began to neatly fold the white slips of paper, he wondered if
the squire were really as ill as Doctor Pratt pretended he was.

The good doctor was fond of making a fuss about trifles, to add to his
own importance.

Margaret and Celia had been out driving that afternoon, for John had
seen them from the drug-store windows.

If they had come home, they were probably rushing distracted about the
house,