y poor stuff," he apologized. "I've
never seen the Alps except from a train window, and as for a chamois--"

"He says his father will surely send him the horns."

Peter groaned.

"Of course!" he said. "Why, in Heaven's name, didn't I make it an eagle?
One can always buy a feather or two. But horns? He really liked the
letter?"

"He adored it. He went to sleep almost at once with it in his hands."

Peter glowed. The small irritation of the custom-house forgotten, he
talked of Jimmy; of what had been done and might still be done, if only
there were money; and from Jimmy he talked boy. He had had a boys' club
at home during his short experience in general practice. Boys were his
hobby.

"Scum of the earth, most of them," he said, his plain face glowing.
"Dirty little beggars off the street. At first they stole my tobacco;
and one of them pawned a medical book or two! Then they got to playing
the game right. By Jove, Harmony, I wish you could have seen them!
Used to line 'em up and make 'em spell, and the two best spellers were
allowed to fight it out with gloves--my own method, and it worked.
Spell! They'd spell their heads off to get a chance at the gloves. Gee,
how I hated to give them up!"

This was a new Peter, a boyish individual Harmony had never met before.
For the first time it struck her that Peter was young. He had always
seemed rather old, solid and dependable, the fault of his elder brother
attitude to her, no doubt. She was suddenly rather shy, a bit aloof.
Peter felt the change and thought she was bored. He talked of other
things.

A surprise was waiting for them in the cold lower hallway of the Pension
Schwarz. A trunk was there, locked and roped, and on the trunk, in
ulster and hat, sat Dr. Gates. Olga, looking rather frightened, was
coming down with a traveling-bag. She put down the bag and scuttled up
the staircase like a scared rabbit. The little doctor was grim. She eyed
Peter and Harmony with an impersonal hostility, referable to her humor.

"I've been waiting for you two," she flung at them. "I've had a terrific
row upstairs and I'm going. That woman's a devil!"

It had been a bad day for Harmony, and this new development, after
everything else, assumed the proportions of a crisis. She had clung,
at first out of sheer loneliness and recently out of affection, to the
sharp little doctor with her mannish affectations, her soft and womanly
heart.

"Sit down, child." Anna Gates moved over on