ing tired practicing my profession. Such is the fact, however. Even
the hub of the universe may pall on the frivolous mind of youth, and
I've 'thrown physic to the dogs, I'll none of it,' for the present at
least. My patients--few and far between, I'm happy to say, will get on
much more comfortably, and stand a much better chance of recovery
without me."

"Indeed! I don't doubt it at all. But your uncle?"

"My uncle can't hope to escape the crosses of life any more than poorer
and better men. All work and no play makes, what's his name, a dull boy.
There will be a row very likely, the sooner my venerated relative is
convinced that my talents don't lie in the bleeding and blistering, the
senna and salts line, the better. They don't."

"Don't they? It would be difficult to say, from what I know of Mr.
Laurence Thorndyke, in what line they _do_ lie. May I ask what you mean
to do?"

"I shall go in for sculpture," responded Mr. Laurence Thorndyke, with
the calm consciousness of superior genius. "Other men have made fame and
fortune by art, and why not I? If my hypocondriacal adopted uncle would
only shell out, send me to Rome, and enable me to study the old masters,
I have the strongest internal conviction that--"

"That you would set the world on fire with your genius. That you would
eclipse the Greek Slave. No doubt--I have known others to think so
before, and I know the sort of 'fame and fortune' they made. How do you
come to be here?" Very curtly and abruptly, this.

"Ah!--thereby hangs a tale," with a long tender glance at Norine. "I am
the debtor of a most happy accident. My horse threw me, and Miss
Bourdon, happening along at the moment, turned Good Samaritan and took
me in."

"I don't mean that," Mr. Gilbert said, stiffly; "how do you come to be
in Maine at all?"

"I beg your pardon. Tom Lydyard--the Portland Lydyards, you know--no I
suppose you don't know, by the by. Tom Lydyard was to be married, and
invited me over on the auspicious occasion. Tom's a Harvard man like
myself, sworn chums, brothers-in-arms, Damon and Pythias, and all that
bosh; and when he asked me down to his wedding, could I--I put it to
yourself, now, Gilbert, could I refuse? I cut the shop. I turned my back
on blue pills and chloral, I came I saw, I--mademoiselle, may I trouble
you for a glass of lemonade? You have no idea, Mr. Gilbert, what a
nuisance I am, not being able to do anything for myself yet."

"Perhaps I have" was Mr. Gilb