"Poor soul! Glad as I am that you have left that place, I don't know how you could bring yourself to leave her." "No more do I, quite." "You could not have brought her into Edinburgh?" Mona shook her head. "Too late!" she said. "It must have been dreadful to give her over, after all, to a man. I don't know how you could do it." "That's because you don't know how kind he is, how he met me half-way, and made my task easy. It was the Kilwinnie doctor, you know, an elderly man." Mona sprang to her feet, and leaned against the mantelpiece. "At the risk of forfeiting your esteem for ever, Doris, I must record my formal testimony that the kindness I have met with at the hands of men-doctors is almost incredible. When I think how nice some of them are, I almost wonder that we women have any patients at all!" "_Nice!_" said Doris quietly, but with concentrated scorn. "It's their _trade_ to be _nice_. I never consulted a man-doctor in my life, and I never will; but if by any inconceivable chance I were compelled to, I would infinitely prefer a boor to a man who was nice!" Mona laughed. "Dear old niceness," she said, "I won't have him abused. When all is said, he is so much more attractive than most of the virtues. And before we banish him from the conversation,--how do you like the Sahib?" Doris's face brightened. "_He_ believes in women-doctors," she said. "Ay, and in all things lovely and of good report." Mona was forgetting her resolution. "He has very wholesome views on lots of subjects," Doris went on reflectively. "Have you seen much of him?" "A good deal. He is very much interested in the things my father cares about. I quite understand now what you meant when you said he was the sort of man one would like to have for a brother." This was disappointing, and Mona brought the conversation to a close. Every day during her visit the Sahib came in for an hour or two, sometimes to lunch or dinner, sometimes to escort "the girls" to a lecture or concert. He was uniformly kind and brotherly to both, but Mona fancied that at times he was sorely ill at ease. "If only he would show a little common-sense," she thought, "and let the matter drop altogether, what a relief it would be for both of us!" But this was not to be. On Sunday afternoon Doris had gone out to teach her Bible-class, Mr Colquhoun was enjoying his weekly afternoon nap, and Mona was sitting alone by the fire in the library, half lost in a mighty arm-chair, with a book on her knee. Suddenly the door opened, and the Sahib entered unannounced. "You are alone?" he said, as though he had not counted on finding her alone. "Yes," said Mona, and she tried in vain to say anything more. It was Sunday afternoon. Somewhat nervously he lifted the book from her lap and glanced at the title-page. "Your choice of literature is exemplary," he said, seating himself beside her.