"Do you know who _Marna_ reminded me of? Quite a friend of yours!--somebody you admire a great deal!" Knowing the nature of the book well from the reviews he was incessantly reading, the young man smiled: "I wonder if you can possibly be alluding to one of your most distinguished cousins." "It did, just a little! At first, I mean--where Marna goes away to lead her own life, and everything.... Mr. Garrott, do you think she's really going to take the position in New York, Cousin Mary, I mean?" "Take it! Why, of course she will, provided she can get it! It would be a remarkable thing for such a young woman, and a great opportunity besides." This the girl seemed to understand. She remarked, however, that Cousin Mary and Mrs. Wing seemed so wrapped up in each other. Her extreme domesticity was peculiarly refreshing to Charles just now; nevertheless, he now took up the cudgels for Modernity, though in the gentlest way: Why should not daughters have the same right to leave home for work that the sons of Mitchellton had, for example? Daughters had always left homes for another reason. Suppose _Marna_ had married the first whippersnapper that came along, and he had carried her off to Australia, etc. But Miss Angela seemed to feel that, for her part, she would look long at any lover who wished to separate her from her mother. Center Street, at this point, was a place of car-tracks, cobblestones, and threatening small establishments of those personal sorts which are always first to appear in a waning "residence district." At the corner stood a Human Hair Goods Works. The Flower house was not intrinsically pretty. It was one of a block of six, all just alike and evidently built some time ago; rather dingy little brick houses, with weather-beaten small verandahs set only a step or two above the sidewalk, and scantily separated from it by grassless "lawns." However, Charles was not repelled by poverty, to which he had been well used. Within, he had the pleasure of meeting Miss Angela's father, who was encountered in the hall, in the act of removing his overcoat. Angela left the two men together, while she tripped upstairs to get "Marna." Charles found the medical father a decidedly queer individual. A very tall, thin, seedy man he was, with a neglected sandy mustache, and a long neck punctuated with a very large Adam's apple, which he jerked with a sort of nervous twitch as he talked. With his lusterless eye and spare, remote manner, he looked like a man who had let himself dry up from within. Yet, if Charles remembered aright, the Medical School had counted this gentleman a distinct acquisition. He assured Dr. Flower that he had long desired this pleasure, and explained:-- "Your cousin, Miss Wing, is an old friend of mine." "My wife's cousin," said the Doctor, seeming to make a distinction. "Quite so! Certainly!" "I believe it was she who first brought the Medical School to your attention?"