“In Tom, of course; your doctor being one of those china patterns of humanity, in which it is vain to find a flaw, and whose mission it is to go about as patent cementers of all cracked and unworthy vessels.” “Eh?” said Colin, opening his good, stupid eyes. “Query--whether your humdrum Scotch doctor is one whit better than his neighbours. (Score that as twenty, Granton). I once heard he has a wife and six children living in the shade, near some cathedral town, Canterbury, or Salisbury.” “What!” and Colin's eyes almost started out of his head with astonishment. I laugh now--I could have laughed then, the minute after, to recollect what a “stound” it gave us both, Colin and me, this utterly improbable and ridiculous tale, which Francis so coolly promulgated. “I don't believe it,” said Colin, doggedly, bless his honest heart! Beg your pardon, Charteris, but there must be some mistake. I don't believe it.” “As you will--it is a matter of very little consequence. Your game, now.” “I won't believe it,” persisted Colin, who, once getting a thing into his head, keeps it there. “Doctor Urquhart isn't the sort of man to do it. If he had married ever so low a woman, he would have made the best of her. He'd never take a wife and keep her in the background. Six young ones, too--and he so fond of children.” Francis laughed. And all this while I sat quiet in my chair. “Children are sometimes inconvenient--even to a gentleman of your friend's parental propensities. Perhaps--we know such things do occur, and can't be helped, sometimes--perhaps the tale is all true, except that he omitted the marriage ceremony.” “Charteris, that girl's sitting there.” It was this hurried whisper of Colin's, and a certain tone of Francis's, which made me guess at the meaning, which, when I clearly caught it--for I am not a child exactly, and Lydia Cartwright's story has lately made me sorrowfully wise,--sent me burning hot all over, and then so cold. “That girl.” Yes, she was but a girl. Perhaps she ought to have crept blushing away, or pretended not to have heard a syllable of these men's talk. But, girl as she was, she scorned to be such a hypocrite--such a coward. What! sit still to hear a friend sneered at, and his character impeached. While one--the only one at hand to do it--durst not so much as say “The tale is false--prove it.” And why? Because she happened to be a woman! Out upon it! I should despise the womanhood that skulked behind such rags of miscalled modesty as these. “Mr. Granton,” I said, as steadily and coolly as I could, “your caution comes too late. If you gentlemen wished to talk about anything I should not hear, you ought to have gone into another room. I have heard every word you uttered.” “I'm sorry for it,” said Colin, bluntly.