Writing this, I am smiling myself, to reflect how little people would give me credit for so much observation; but a liking to study character is, perhaps, of all others, the hobby most useful to a medical man. I have left my object of remark all this while, standing by her orange-tree, and contemplating a large caterpillar slowly crawling over one of its leaves. I recommended her to get Treherne to smoke in her conservatory, which would remove the insects from her flowers. "They are not mine, I rarely pay them the least attention." I thought she was fond of flowers. "Yes, but wild flowers, not tame, like these of Penelope's. I only patronise those she throws away as being not 'good.' Can you imagine mother Nature making a 'bad' flower?" I said, I concluded Miss Johnston was a scientific horticulturist. "Indeed she is. I never knew a girl so learned about flowers, well-educated, genteel, greenhouse flowers, as our Penelope." "Our" Penelope. There must be a pleasure in these family possessive pronouns. I had the honour of taking into dinner this lady, who is very sprightly, with nothing at all Odyssean about her. During a lack of conversation, for Treherne, of course, devoted himself to his ladye-love; and Mr. Johnston is the most silent of hosts, I ventured to remark that this was the first time I had ever met a lady with that old Greek name. "Penelope!" cried Treherne. "'Pon my life I forget who was Penelope. Do tell us, Dora. That young lady knows everything, Doctor; a regular blue-stocking; at first she quite frightened me, I declare." Captain Treherne seems to be making himself uncommonly familiar with his future sisters-in-law. This one did not exactly relish it, to judge by her look. She has a will of her own, and a temper, too, "that young lady." It is as well Treherne did not happen to set his affections upon her. Poor youth! he never knows when to stop. "Ha! I have it now, Miss Dora. Penelope was in the Odyssey--that book of engravings you were showing my cousin Charteris and me that Friday night. And how I laughed at what Charteris said--that he thought the good lady was very much over-rated, and Ulysses in the right of it to ride away again, when, coming back after ten years, he found her a prudish, psalm-singing, spinning old woman. Hollo!--have I put my foot into it, Lisabel?" It seemed so, by the constrained silence of the whole party. Miss Johnston turned scarlet, and then white, but immediately said to me, laughing:-- "Mr. Charteris is an excellent classic; he was papa's pupil for some years. Have you ever met him?"