Her brother, who, until a very few days ago, had not cared a straw about her, whilst Ole had always been with her since they were children together, had rowed with her, read to her, been to her both brother and sister in one, and had faithfully written to her when they were separated; her own brother had never done any one of all these things. Even his defeat of to-day he credited to her account; for if he had not, for her sake, been so conscientious in working for his examination, to which he had been assisted by her father, then he would probably have known more about all those matters under discussion to-day--he would perhaps not have been defeated at all; this, too, he suffered for the sake of his fidelity. As long as Josephine was a child and half grown up, Edward had seldom been together with her without teasing her. She was very thin, with large, black eyes, often uncombed hair, red hands, altogether scraggy; he nicknamed her "the duckling," and once when she had hurt her foot and went about limping, "the lame duckling." He could never really make her out, she was so defiant, and yet shy--kept always at a distance. And then, time upon time, she was the cause of his getting a beating. She considered it "just" to tell each time he did anything wrong. And if he beat her for telling, then it was "just" to tell about that too. He took a dislike to her. Soon, however, they were separated, through his leaving his father's house. After that unlucky day, when father and son met on the road to Store-Tuft, the apothecary took pity on his old friend and, taking the boy from him, adopted him entirely as his own son. What the father had never been able to succeed in succeeded now. The boy was at once taken away from school, and allowed to devote himself to his chief interest, natural history. Chemical and physical analysis or botanical expeditions were his highest aim, and for two years he studied nothing but what belonged to those branches. After that he went through other necessary studies with a private master, and very quickly; he began his medical studies after passing his second examination. As long as he was at home he only saw his sister when she came across to the apothecary's to see him, and, as their interests were entirely opposed, their intercourse became almost nil. Later on, the apothecary used to take him abroad with him in the holidays; Edward was so clever at languages, which he certainly was not. It was not often, therefore, that the brother and sister met in their holiday time. But from the time that, as a student, he had first travelled abroad with the apothecary, and she saw her brother come home, grown-up, with new fashions, both in ideas and in dress, energetic, full of life, a very ideal, especially a woman's ideal of youth, from that time she had always secretly admired him. He, for his part, either overlooked her completely, or else teased her; it cost her