nnie could not have done. Still, she does not rouse the child
as Rose roused her. What do you think, Jonathan? Would a little dog be
in your way? Would its barking disturb you?" Mrs. Millar appealed to her
husband.

"Not in reason, Maria; not if it does not take to baying at the moon,
or yelping beyond bounds. Dora gives in too much to May, in place of
taking the child from her books, on which naturally she is inclined
to fall back. Dora has become her audience, and listens to her
performances--even aids and abets them. I caught them at it yesterday.
First May actually declaimed several paragraphs from a speech of
Cicero's, and next she got Dora to repeat after her the most crabbed
of the Greek verbs. I shall have a couple of blue-stockings, and what
is worse, one of them spurious, in the room of the single real
production I reckoned upon among my daughters. By all means let May
have a howling monster. She is not too old for a game of romps; and I
must say, though I have never opposed the higher education of women,
I don't want her cultivated into a gossamer, a woman all nerves and
sensations, before she is out of her teens."

"Do you suppose Tom Robinson can still be thinking of Dora?" suggested
Mrs. Millar dubiously.

"I wish he were," said the little Doctor, ruefully. "I wish he were.
Yes, Mrs. Millar, I am sufficiently mercenary or sordid, or whatever you
like to call it, where one of my daughters is concerned, to give
expression to that sentiment. But I should say he is not, unfortunately.
Robinson is a shy man, and, no doubt, proud after his fashion. It must
have taken a great effort--premature, therefore mistaken, according to
my judgment--for him to screw himself up to the pitch of proposing for a
girl of whose answering regard he was uncertain. Having made the blunder
and paid the penalty, he is not at all likely to put his fate to the
touch again, so far as Dora is concerned. He is not the style of
pertinacious, overbearing fellow who would persecute a woman with his
attentions and ask her twice. Poor Dora has lost her chance, I take it."

"I cannot say that I think it any great loss, to this day," answered
Mrs. Millar, stubbornly. She gave a toss of her head, of such unusual
spirit, that it so nearly dislodged her cap. Dr. Millar involuntarily
put out a finger and thumb to lay hold of the truant. "We have our
worldly losses, to be sure, and the other poor dear girls have gone out
into the world very cheer