ver
others, and said, as he put down the last: "Now I'll show you the best
way to take these messes." And, as quick as a flash, he sent one after
another smashing down into the posy-beds below.

"But Aunt Plenty won't like it; and Aunt Myra will be angry, for she
sent most of them!" cried Rose, half frightened and half pleased at such
energetic measures.

"You are my patient now, and I'll take the responsibility. My way of
giving physic is evidently the best, for you look better already," he
said, laughing so infectiously that Rose followed suit, saying saucily,

"If I don't like your medicines any better than those, I shall throw
them into the garden, and then what will you do?"

"When I prescribe such rubbish, I'll give you leave to pitch it
overboard as soon as you like. Now what is the next trouble?"

"I hoped you would forget to ask."

"But how can I help you if I don't know them? Come, let us have No. 3."

"It is very wrong, I suppose, but I do sometimes wish I had not quite so
many aunts. They are all very good to me, and I want to please them; but
they are so different, I feel sort of pulled to pieces among them," said
Rose, trying to express the emotions of a stray chicken with six hens
all clucking over it at once.

Uncle Alec threw back his head and laughed like a boy, for he could
entirely understand how the good ladies had each put in her oar and
tried to paddle her own way, to the great disturbance of the waters and
the entire bewilderment of poor Rose.

"I intend to try a course of uncles now, and see how that suits your
constitution. I'm going to have you all to myself, and no one is to give
a word of advice unless I ask it. There is no other way to keep order
aboard, and I am captain of this little craft, for a time at least. What
comes next?"

But Rose stuck there, and grew so red, her uncle guessed what that
trouble was.

"I don't think I can tell this one. It wouldn't be polite, and I feel
pretty sure that it isn't going to be a trouble any more."

As she blushed and stammered over these words, Dr. Alec turned his eyes
away to the distant sea, and said so seriously, so tenderly, that she
felt every word and long remembered them,

"My child, I don't expect you to love and trust me all at once, but I do
want you to believe that I shall give my whole heart to this new duty;
and if I make mistakes, as I probably shall, no one will grieve over
them more bitterly than I. It is my fault that