nt her nice soldierly notes, asking her to call
upon him if there was anything he could do for her. He had sent her
books, and magazines, and now on this first visit, he brought back the
"Pickwick" which he had picked up in the road after the accident.

"I have wondered," Madge said, "what became of it."

They were in the Flippin sitting-room. Madge was in a winged chair with
a freshly-washed gray linen cover. The chair had belonged to Mrs.
Flippin's father, and for fifty years had held the place by the east
window in summer and by the fireplace in winter. Oscar had wanted to
bring things from Hamilton Hill to make Madge comfortable. But she had
refused to spoil the simplicity of the quiet old house. "Everything that
is here belongs here, Oscar," she had told him, "and I like it."

She wore a mauve negligee that was sheer and soft and flowing, and her
burnt-gold hair was braided and wound around her head in a picturesque
and becoming coiffure.

As she turned the pages of the little book the Major noticed her hands.
They were white and slender, and she wore only one ring--a long amethyst
set in silver.

"Do you play?" he asked abruptly.

"Yes. Why?"

"Your hands show it."

She smiled at him. "I am afraid that my hands don't quite tell the
truth." She held them up so that the light of the lamp shone through
them. "They are really a musician's hands, aren't they? And I am only a
dabbler in that as in everything else."

"You can't expect me to believe that."

"But I am. I have intelligence. But I'm a 'dunce with wits.' I know what
I ought to do but I don't do it. I think that I have brains enough to
write, I am sure I have imagination enough to paint, I have strength
enough when I am well to"--she laughed,--"scrub floors. But I don't
write or play or paint--or scrub floors--I don't believe that there is
one thing in the world that I can do as well as Mary Flippin makes
biscuits."

Her eyes seemed to challenge him to deny her assertion. He settled
himself lazily in his chair, and asked about the book.

"Tell me why you like Dickens, when nobody reads him in these days
except ourselves."

"I like him because in my next incarnation I want to live in the kind of
world he writes about."

He was much interested. "You do?"

She nodded. "Yes. I never have. My world has always been--cut and dried,
conventional, you know the kind." The slender hand with the amethyst
ring made a little gesture of disdain. "There we