worn places in the old curtain how tall he was and how dark and how handsome. She could not decide what kind of clothes his riding clothes were. At last he mounted his horse and galloped up the hill, and then Doris returned serenely to the darning of the book-muslin party coat. VII THE DOCTOR'S DILEMMA Within the hour Lynn Gordon rode back down the hill, and passed the window very slowly, watching the curtain as a star-gazer awaits the passing of a cloud. The baffling width of white cotton hung still unstirred; Doris was no longer sitting behind it, but the young man had no means of knowing that she had gone. As the hand on the reins unconsciously drew the horse almost to a standstill, the doctor and his wife left their seats on the porch of their house over the way, and came out to the gate to speak to him. They had met him at his grandmother's on the previous evening, and they had been old friends of his father. Lynn sprang from the saddle and, leading his horse, crossed the big road to shake hands with them. "Have you lost something?" asked Mrs. Alexander. "Oh, no--yes--I have lost a jewel--a pearl," the young man replied rashly. The doctor's lady exclaimed in surprise. Jewels were rarely lost or found in that country. The gems oftenest lost were the sparkling seeds which flashed out of the jewel-weed; the finest pearls ever found were those which the mistletoe bore. "Dear me, what a pity," lamented Mrs. Alexander. "And how was your pearl set?" "It wasn't mine. I didn't notice how it was set. Oh, yes, I did. It was set amid roses and honeysuckle and humming-birds against a field of spotless snow," Lynn said, still more lightly. The doctor's wife was not a dull woman. She understood his tone, though she did not understand what he meant. She had been eagerly scanning the big road, as far as she could see; thinking that a jewel dropped near by on the highway--unrolling like a broad band of brown velvet from the far green hills on the north to the farther green hills on the south--must sparkle and flash, showing a long way off in such brilliant sunshine. Now, however, she knew that Lynn was not in earnest, and she turned with a smile on her own face to meet the laughing frankness of his fine dark eyes. But a glance was just passing between the young man and the older man, and she caught that also, with the vague, helpless uneasiness, tinged with resentment, which every woman feels at seeing a sign of the freemasonry of men. But a doctor's wife learns to overlook a good many things which she would like to have explained, if she be a sensible woman, as Mrs. Alexander was. This one merely said:--