times when the ghosts which haunted him
refused to be exorcised, and Anstice felt himself unfit, by reason of
the handicap which Fate had imposed upon him, to mingle with the happy,
the careless, the innocent ones of the earth.

To Sir Richard, kind-hearted, uncritical, undiscerning, such fits of
silence, even of gloom, were natural enough in a man whose life was
spent largely in the service of the sick and suffering among humanity.
He was probably worried over some difficult case, Sir Richard concluded,
when he found the younger man's conversation halting, his manner absent,
or, on rare occasions, morose; and it must be noted that as a rule
Anstice had too much respect for his friends to inflict these moods upon
them. As for Iris, quicker of discernment than her father, of a more
analytical turn of mind, she guessed that the changing moods which
characterized her new acquaintance were not induced by any external or
professional worries, but were the marks of a trouble far more serious,
far more vital to the man himself. Of the nature of this trouble Iris
had naturally no very clear idea, though now and again she considered
the probability of him having been what she called, rather
school-girlishly, crossed in love. But though her phraseology might be
childish there was something purely womanly in the compassion with which
she thought of Anstice; and on one occasion when a fit of melancholy had
overcome him unexpectedly in her presence, he was startled, not to say
dismayed, to notice something of this half-tender, half-impersonal pity
in the soft, brooding glance of her eyes as they rested on him for a
moment.

It was not with the Waynes alone that he grew more intimate as the days
went by. A short time after his introduction to Greengates Anstice
received a summons to Cherry Orchard, and on repairing thither found
that his patient on this occasion was Cherry Carstairs. With all her
demure dignity Cherry was at times possessed of a very spirit of
perversity; and being, although of such tender years, absolutely devoid
of fear, she had tried conclusions in secret with a shaggy pony in a
field close by her home, with the result that, owing to the pony's
stubborn refusal to allow her to climb upon his back, Cherry received a
kick, more in sorrow than in anger, which snapped the bone in her tiny
forearm, and sent her stumbling home, very pale and shaky, her dignity
sadly in abeyance, to seek her mother.

Anstice, on arri