the pound, and did a thriving business, but the poor old
father died all the same. He was a respectable, honest man, and all his
customers attended his funeral in the most neighborly way in the world,
with a grim look upon their sympathetic countenances of "I told you so.
It should have been Dr. Dennis."

Yes, to all but Phebe, her illness and long imprisonment and her return
to matter-of-fact life downstairs, was a tame-enough story now. But to
her it was as the opening chapter of a new history. Life seemed changed
and strange to her when she stepped back into it, and took up again the
duties and labors that she had laid by only so lately. Had she dreamed
herself into another world, or why was it so hard to put herself back
into the place she had stepped out of? Everybody about her was the same;
nothing had really changed in any way, and certainly she had not. Neither
had Gerald. Neither had Mr. Halloway. What had she expected? What was it
she had vaguely looked forward to? What was it that was so different?

"Pray, what are you thinking of?" Denham asked suddenly one day, turning
to her with his bright, sweet smile. "You have been quiet for very long."

"So have you been quiet," returned Phebe. "I do not think I have been any
less talkative than you."

"Perhaps not," said Denham. "We are leaving Soeur Angelique and Miss
Vernor to have a regular tete-a-tete of it, are we not? But you evade my
question in a very unbecoming way, Miss Phebe. Tell me, what were you
thinking of?"

"I don't quite know," answered Phebe, slowly. "But I think I was wishing
for impossibilities,--for things that can't possibly happen, just because
it would be so nice if they could."

"Ah," said Halloway, dreamily. "That is a very bad habit, a frightfully
unsatisfactory, delusive, and, indeed, an altogether pernicious habit,
Miss Phebe. It takes the taste out of every thing solid, and leaves one
an appetite only for indigestible sweets. I must correct you of it. I
will, just as soon, that is, as I have broken myself of it. Will you wait
till I have taken myself in hand?"

They were together sitting in a little recess of the rectory parlor,
while Mrs. Whittridge and Gerald were talking at the farther end of the
room. Soeur Angelique had invited the two girls to tea, and Halloway,
when he came in from his study, seated himself at once by Phebe, though
after his warm greeting and self-congratulations upon having her back
in her old haunts, he