her past experience might lead her to think. “If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but she must not eat such trash as that;” and he set himself to think again, just as Guy Remington drove up, bearing in his hand a most exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the office at once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook. “I thought you might be going down to Honedale as I knew you returned last night, so I brought these flowers for your patient, with my compliments; or if you prefer I will give them to you, and you can present them as if coming from yourself.” “As if I would do that,” the doctor answered, taking the bouquet in his hand the better to examine and admire it. “Did you arrange it, or your gardener?” he asked, and when Guy replied that the merit of arrangement, if merit there were, belonged to himself, he began to deprecate his own awkwardness and want of tact. “Here I have been cudgeling my head this half hour trying to think what I could take her as a peace-offering, and could think of nothing, while you—well, you and I are different entirely. You know just what is proper—just what to say, and when to say it—while I am a perfect bore, and without doubt shall make some ludicrous blunder in delivering the flowers. To-day will be the first time really that we meet, as she was sleeping when I was there last, while on all other occasions she has paid no attention whatever to me.” For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing that extra care had been taken with his toilet, that the collar was fresh from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable manner, instead of being twisted in a hard knot, with the ends looking as if they had been chewed. “Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are you—twenty-six or twenty-seven?” “Just your age;—why?” and the doctor looked up with an expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning, that the latter, instead of telling why, replied: “Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father. Agnes, I verily believe is more than half in love with you; but, on the whole, I should not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better take some one younger—say _Jessie_. You are only eighteen years her senior.” The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished, said, with the utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were talking of her.” “Innocent as the new-born babe,” was Guy’s mental comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied experience.