too; "and I
am thankful to say Tray has been much better behaved since he was at the
veterinary surgeon's."

"There was room for improvement," Tom Robinson said, with the gravity of
a judge.

"I left him on in front, begging to May for a bit of chalk."

"It is as well that it was not for a bit of beef," he said. Then he
suddenly changed the subject. "Do you know that I have something of
yours which has come into my hands that I have been wishing to give
back to you ever since I was a responsible being again?"

As he spoke, he unfastened for the second time in their acquaintance the
tiny vinaigrette case from his watch-chain, and handed it to her.

Dora flushed scarlet, and took it without a word.

"I got it one night in the course of that fever, when I was at the
worst, and I know you will like to hear that I am sure it did me good.
The first thing that I recollect after a long blank, which lasted for
days, I believe, was feebly fingering and sniffing at the little box,
with a curious agreeable sense of old association. Then I was able to
look at it, and recognize it as my mother's vinaigrette. She had let me
play with it when I was a child; and when I was a boy, subject to
headache from staying too long in the hot sunshine in the cricket-field,
she used to lend me her vinaigrette for a cure. But I knew that I had
asked you to have it, and that you had done me the favour to accept it.
The fascinating puzzle was, how had it come back to me? At last I
questioned Barbara Franklin. She could not tell any more than myself at
first, and was equally puzzled, until she remembered your sister Annie's
running into the room on the night when you were listening for news of
my death, and asking for a smelling-bottle, and your fumbling for an
instant in your pocket, and giving her something. That made it perfectly
plain."

Too plain, Dora reflected in horror, for what might not Miss Franklin
have suspected and communicated in addition to her cousin?

"I was glad I had it in my pocket," said Dora, stammering. "I took it up
to London with me, and--and found it often refreshing in the middle of
the heat and fatigue. I am thankful to hear it was of use to you, who
have the best right to it."

"No," he said emphatically, "though it was of the greatest use. My
cousin Barbara said also that you were very sorry for me. Dora, was that
so?" Tom himself blushed a little in asking the question, as if he had a
guilty consciousness of h