she had
counted upon for the next few months. In the first place, letters took
a great many hours. In the second place, her studies were pretty
frequently broken up of an evening by Dr. Harrison.

He certainly came often; whether it was because of the strength of
attraction in that particular house, or the failure of any attraction
beside in all the coasts of Pattaquasset, was a problem which remained
unsolved by anything in the doctor's manner. His manner was like what
it had been the evening just recounted. He amused himself, after his
nonchalant fashion, and amused his hearers; he did not in the mean time
call upon them for any help at all. He discerned easily that Faith had
a little shyness about her; that might mean one thing or it might mean
another; and Dr. Harrison was far too wise to risk the one thing by
endeavouring to find out whether it was the other. The doctor was no
fisher had no favour for the sport; but if he had been, he might have
thought that now he was going to give his fish a very long line indeed,
and let it play to any extent of shyness or wilfulness; his hand on the
reel all the time.

The talk that would do for Miss Essie would not please Faith. The
doctor knew that long ago. He drew upon his better stores. His
knowledge of the earth we live on; his familiarity with nature's and
art's wonders; history and philosophy; literature and science; and a
knowledge of the world which he used as a little piquant spice to
flavour all the rest of his knowledge. Thrown in justly, with a nice
hand, so as not to offend, it did rather serve to provoke a delicate
palate; while it unmistakably gratified his own. It was the salt to the
doctor's dish.

But everything wants breaking up with variety, and variety itself may
come to be monotonous. He asked Faith one evening if she knew anything
of chymistry; and proceeded upon her reply to give her sundry bits of
detail and some further insight into the meaning and bearing of the
science. It was not August then, but it might have been, for the
leisurely manner in which the doctor "unwound his skein" of talk, as if
he were talking to himself or _for_ himself; and yet he was, and he
knew it, filling Faith's ears with delight. He took up the same subject
afterwards from time to time; beginning from any trifle of suggestion,
he would go off into an exquisite chymical discussion, illustrated and
pointed and ornamented, as no lecturer but one loving both his subject
a