er
pretty hands, one of which wore the victim's ring. Corry felt that he
could stand it, even to the putting on of the minister's gloves. When
she had finished her work, the hospital nurse said, "that silly little
Marjorie, angry because Cecile would not allow her to read fairy
stories to Mr. Wilkinson, surrendered you to me."

"O Marjorie, my darlin', and would you throw your lovely self away on a
poor, stupid, worthless thing like me?"

CHAPTER XV.

Miss Carmichael Snubs and Thinks--The Constable and the
Prisoner--Matilda and the Doctor--The Children Botanize--Pressing
Specimens--Nomenclature--The Colonel Makes a Discovery--Miss
Carmichael Does Not Fancy Wilks--Mr. Newberry Takes Matilda--Mr.
Pawkins Makes Mischief and is Punished--Rounds on
Sylvanus--Preparations for Inquest

"Mr. Coristine, I never gave you permission to call me by my Christian
name, much less to think that I accepted Marjorie's foolish little
charge. I am sorry if I have led you to believe that I acted so bold, so
shameless a part."

"Oh, Miss Carmichael, forgive me. I'm stupid, as I said, but, as the
Bible has it, I'll try and keep a watch on the door of my lips in
future. And you such an angel of mercy, too! Please, Miss Carmichael,
pardon a blundering Irishman."

"Nonsense," she answered. "I have nothing to pardon; only, I did not
want you to misunderstand me." The gloves were on, and she shook hands
with him, and laughed a comical little insincere laugh in his face, and
ran away to her own room to have a foolish little cry. She heard her
friend Cecile reading poetry to the wounded Wilkinson, and, looking out
of her window, saw Mr. Perrowne helping her uncle to lift the doctor's
chair out into the garden, and her mother, freed from conversation with
the madwoman, plucking a flower for Mr. Errol's coat. There, too, was a
young man, his hands encased in black kid gloves, sitting down on a
bench with Mr. Terry, and with difficulty filling a meerschaum pipe. She
thought he had a quiet, disappointed look, like a man's whose warm,
generous impulses have been checked, and she felt guilty. It was true
they had not known one another long, but what was she, a teacher in a
common school, that was what people called them, to put on airs before
such a man as that? If it had been Mr. Wilkinson, now; but, no; she was
afraid of Mr. Wilkinson, the distant, the irreproachable, the autocratic
great Mogul. She looked do