I wondered what was the cause of Dr. Maynard's coolness. Perhaps he felt that Alec was blaming him for allowing me to take so much of his money; perhaps he was nursing the idea that he was responsible for the strangeness between my older brother and myself; or else, possibly Dr. Maynard thought that since I had committed such an unheard-of act as to ask him for money I would naturally feel embarrassed and ill-at-ease in his presence. But that was all nonsense. I didn't regret a thing that I had done. In spite of what Alec might consider my shocking impropriety, I didn't feel ashamed. I adored Dr. Maynard's cheerfulness! It seemed as if I must go and tell him that the only fun I had left now was the fun I had with him. I used to love his jokes and merry-making. I believe Dr. Maynard could make the worst catastrophe in the world a lark, if he wanted to. Why, whenever we had a puncture in the automobile, Dr. Maynard was so good-natured about it that any one would have thought he enjoyed punctures. "You've got a flat tire, George," he'd sing out to me (he calls me George when I am running the car), or, "Sorry, Miss; sounds mighty like a blow-out," he'd say, if he happened to be at the wheel; and while he was jacking-up, I'd flax around and unlock the tools. Before he had the shoe off, I was ready with the new inner tube, and thirty minutes from the time we had stopped we were zinging along again as good as new. Most of the sunshine in my life--literal sunshine and the other kind too--came through Dr. Maynard. As I became more and more convinced that he was acting queerly, I began to realise how kind he had been to me. I suppose Dr. Maynard is really a better friend of mine than Juliet Adams, to whom I write twice every week, and for whom I make a stunning Christmas present every year. He has surely done more to fill my heart with gratitude and everlasting appreciation. It flashed upon me, one day, that I had never done a thing in my life, without pay, for Dr. Maynard. I began thinking and thinking what a girl of nineteen could do anyhow, for a man of thirty-five, who lives all alone and has all the money he wants. It was when I was working on Juliet's Christmas present that it occurred to me that possibly it might please an older man, who didn't have any family, if some one gave _him_ a Christmas present. The more I thought about it the better I liked the idea. It seemed to me a delicate way of expressing my thanks to Dr. Maynard for all that he had done.