pidly forgot to deliver my message
when I had a moment's chance this morning. Now as it is possible you
may see this--if she cannot be called the silver-footed Thetis, she is
certainly the silver-tongued--you would know how to address her?"

"Thetis!--probably, when I see her."

"I may presume you will know her when you see her,--and that brings me
to my point. I have got some good microscopic preparations which I am
to have the pleasure of exhibiting to-night to some friends of my
sister. Now it would greatly add to her pleasure and mine, if this
mortal Polyhymnia will consent to be of the number--and this is what I
was going to ask you, if you please, to communicate to her or to her
mother, in whose good graces, as I told you," said the doctor with a
funny smile, "I don't think I have the honour to stand high. Sophy
would have written this morning, but I gave her no chance. I will call
for Miss Derrick this evening if she will allow me."

Mr. Linden took out his pencil and made a note of the facts.

"First," he said, "I am to communicate, then you are to call, after
that to exhibit. Do you call that crooked?--why it's as straight as the
road from here to your house."

Dr. Harrison looked--and for a minute did not anything else.

"For your arm, Linden," he said then getting up from his chair, and a
smile of doubtful comicality moving his lip a little--"we shall know
better about it in two or three weeks; but certainly I think you must
be content to stay at home for double those--that's undoubted."

Mr. Linden gave the doctor a quick glance, but the smile which followed
was 'undoubted' in another way.

"When two opposing forces meet at right angles, doctor," he said, "you
know what happens to the object. Not contented inertia."

"Contented! no, very likely,--not when it is _this_ object. But you
will find a third force will establish the inertia."

"What is your third force?"

"The necessity of the case," said the doctor seriously.

But to that Mr. Linden made no reply. The conversation had been kept up
not only against weakness but against pain, and he lay very still and
colourless for a long time after the doctor closed the door.

Meanwhile Faith, busy at her brown moreen, made her mother's job of
mending seem like embroidery; but by degrees Mrs. Derrick's face became
thoughtful, and she said, rather emphatically,

"Child, have you been up to see Mr. Linden to-day?"

Faith's hammer dropped, and her ha