ange, intense eyes to mine; a blinding, intelligent
light flowed from them which I could not defy, nor resist, a light
which filled my veins with a torrent of fire.

"You think Cassandra is not like you," he continued with a curious
intonation.

"I told her that your oddities never troubled me."

"That is right."

"To-day," I muttered, "Alice, I shall go back to school."

"You must ride," she answered.

"Jesse will drive you up," said Charles, rising. Alice called him
back, to tell him her plan of the Boston visit.

"Certainly; go by all means," he said, and went on his way.

I made my application to father, telling him I had nothing to wear. He
answered with haste, begging me to clothe myself at once.

CHAPTER XVII.

It was November when we returned from Boston. One morning when the
frost sparkled on the dead leaves, which still dropped on the walks,
Helen Perkins and I were taking a stroll down Silver Street, behind
the Academy, when we saw Dr. White coming down the street in his
sulky, rocking from side to side like a cradle. He stopped when he
came up to us.

"Do ye sit up late of evenings, Miss Morgeson?"

"No, Doctor; only once a week or so."

"You are a case." And he meditatively pulled his shaggy whiskers
with a loose buckskin glove. "There's a ripple coming under your eyes
already; what did I tell you? Let me see, did you say you were like
father or mother?"

"I look like my father. By the way, Doctor, I am studying my
temperament. You will make an infidel of me by your inquiries."

Helen laughed, and staring at him, called him a bear, and told him he
ought to live in a hospital, where he would have plenty of sick women
to tease.

"I should find few like you there."

He chirruped to his horse, but checked it again, put out his head and
called, "Keep your feet warm, wont you? And read Shakespeare."

Helen said that Dr. White had been crossed in love, and long after had
married a deformed woman--for science's sake, perhaps. His talent was
well known out of Rosville; but he was unambitious and eccentric.

"He is interested in you, Cass, that I see. Are you quite well? What
about the change you spoke of?"

"Dr. White has theories; he has attached one to me. Nature has
adjusted us nicely, he thinks, with fine strings; if we laugh too
much, or cry too long, a knot slips somewhere, which 'all the king's
men' can't take up again. Perhaps he judges women by his deformed
wife. Men d