"I have not forgotten," said Olive, in a low voice. "Whenever I go into a chemist's shop, it takes me back in memory to your father's little surgery. How cleverly you used to help him with his drugs and mixtures! You seemed to know the contents of every gallipot and bottle almost as well as he did. If you had been a man you would have been a doctor." "Possibly so," said Olive. "I remember when Farmer Sinclair's dog bit you," continued Mr. Kelvin, "how bravely you bore the pain. The dog died a week after, and some people said you had poisoned it; but I scouted the idea." "But I did poison the brute," replied Olive. "You did?" "Why not? It bit me in the wrist. I have the scar now. It was not fit to live." Matthew Kelvin shrugged his shoulders, but did not rejoin. "But why call up such reminiscences?" said Olive. "I want to hear about yourself. A rising man like you, Matthew--a man born to fight his way upward--how is it that you are still unmarried? A rich wife would do so much to help forward your ambitious schemes!" "My ambitious schemes, indeed;" said Kelvin, with a sly twinkle in his eye. "What has a simple-minded country lawyer like me to do with ambition?" "I know you too well, Matthew, not to feel sure that in ten years from this time you hope to be in a very different position." Kelvin dropped the paper knife with which he had been playing, and gazed steadily at his cousin for a moment before speaking. Her eyes met his unshrinkingly. "You are right, Olive," he said, speaking 'gravely enough now. "I _do_ cherish some strangely bold dreams. I _am_ an ambitious man; but you are the only person who seems to have divined that fact. I am far richer than the world knows of; and, but that it would almost break my mother's heart, I should have given up the old business years ago. In any case, I shall dispose of it before long. I can afford now to put it behind me. The first step in my ambition is to get into Parliament. And so you think I ought to get married, eh?" "Yes--to a woman who could help you forward in your career by sympathizing with and comprehending the aims and objects of your ambition. No mere drawing-room doll must be your wife, but a woman fitted in heart and brain to be your companion." "I won't say that you are not right," said Mr. Kelvin. "But in these matters men rarely do that which their friends think they ought to do. Cupid, you know, never went to school, and his problems cannot be worked out by rule-of-three." "That may apply to a very young man, who lacks sense to know what is best for him and where to look for it; but not to you." "That is just where you make a mistake, Olive. What will you say of my strength of mind--of my common sense--when I tell you that I have fallen in love with a simple country girl with nothing to recommend her save a pretty face and the finest eyes in the world?"