-not the operatic kind,
you know, but enough to teach them to sing to a man like Jenny does. Go
on, Jenny."

The sustaining and cheering effects of Sophronia's fried chicken and
waffles probably added to his comfortable enjoyment, which was without
limit. He leaned back in his armchair as far as the stiffly ornamented
back would admit of his so doing and kept time with his head or his feet,
occasionally joining in on a chorus with startling suddenness in an
evidently subdued roar, which, though subdued, was still roaring enough,
and, despite the excellence of its intention, quite out of tune enough to
cause the wax flowers in their wax basket on the table (both done by
Jenny at boarding-school) to shake under the glass shade until they
tapped against its side with a delicate tinkle.

It was while this was going on that Tom, sitting near a side table,
picked up a book and almost unconsciously opened it and read its title.
Having read its title, an expression of interest showed itself on his
countenance and he turned over a leaf or so, and as he turned them over
dipped into them here and there.

He had the book in his hand when Jenny Rutherford ended her last chorus
and came towards him.

"Do you go much by this?" he asked.

She took it from him and glanced at it.

"I brought Tom Scott up on it," she said. "Mother wasn't with me then,
and I was such a child I did not know what to do with him."

"Seems to be a good sort of book," said Tom, and he turned over the
leaves again.

"It is," she answered, smiling at him. "There are lots of things in it
every doctor don't know. It was written by a woman."

"That's the reason, I reckon," said Tom.

He laid the book down and seemed to forget it, but about an hour after
when his bedroom candle was brought and he was on the point of retiring
for the night, he turned upon the threshold of the sitting-room and spoke
to his hostess in the tone of one suddenly recollecting himself.

"Where did you say you got that book?" he inquired, snuffing his candle
with his thumb and forefinger.

"I didn't say at all," answered Jenny. "I got it from Brough & Bros.,
Baltimore."

"Oh, there!" he remarked. "Good-night."

When he reached his room and shut himself in, he set his candlestick on a
table and proceeded to draw from his pocket the memorandum-book, also
producing the stump of a lead pencil.

Then he made as he stood up before the looking-glass and in the
flickering light of