ease the offertory at least twenty-five per cent, and
they keep the choir boys from flatting on their upper notes. I had
never seen a girls' college, till I came here; but I can't help
thinking it has its own disadvantages. I like them in the aggregate,
Miss Keltridge; but I can't seem to get on with them individually. They
are so distressingly young. I leave all that to Mr. Brenton."

"He has been most successful," Olive assented tamely.

"Yes. He has a way with women, as they say; he manages them by the
ears. At least--I mean--" The curate, confounded by the hideous mental
picture that he had evoked, was floundering helplessly.

"Exactly," Olive assented once more.

The curate rallied.

"And yet, they all adore him," he concluded. "That is the strange thing
about Mr. Brenton, Miss Keltridge. He manages most women grandly," the
curate, sure that he had retrieved his error, in his self-gratulation
promptly slipped into a second one; "but that suffragette wife of
his--"

"Mrs. Brenton is not a suffragette," Olive interposed hurriedly.

"No? Well, she might as well be. She's Christian Scientist, and that is
only the next thing to it. Besides, she is terribly masterful, is Mrs.
Brenton. Take the case of the baby, for instance: no matter what
happens to be the trouble with the little one, Mrs. Brenton won't allow
a grain of calomel inside the house. I call it--"

"Olive!" It was the voice of the doctor, speaking from the threshold;
and the voice was weighted with anxiety. "Can you be excused for just
one minute?"

With a little gesture of apology, Olive left her place beside the tray,
and went in the direction of the voice. She overtook her father in his
consulting-room, where he was pacing the floor, fists in his pockets,
hair awry and his face singularly dark and haggard.

"Olive," he said abruptly, as his daughter came in sight; "can you
possibly send off that snippet, and go down to the Opdykes' for an
hour?"

"I suppose I can. Is anything the matter?"

"Yes, and no. There's nothing new, exactly; but they all are--getting
on their nerves. I've been down there, half the afternoon, trying to
steady them; but it is a case where they need a woman. If you can go,
Olive? And don't come back, until you can't do another thing for any of
them. No matter if it does take it out of you; I can patch you up
again, all right. And they all want you. Mrs. Opdyke asked if you would
come." The doctor came to a full halt, hi