likely to do at present, to the detriment of any other would-be suitor. Paddy felt she liked them all, but not any one more than another, except Jack O’Hara. Poor Ted Masterman only came in for an equal share with the rest, though she still continued to wear his coin, and he never ceased to think of her, night and day, in his far-off African home. Then there were the two O’Connors, to say nothing of Cousin Basil. At first it had been the gallant Captain, who soon found himself in a ripe condition to be consoled for the loss of Owen Carew; but he had made no headway whatever, not even as much as with the gay society belle, and finally had to return to India needing consolation all over again. Then his brother Pat, the Middlesex lady-killer, took a turn, but with still less success, for Paddy would not even bother to amuse him, and pitilessly summed him up in the same breath with the meek young curate, who had meanwhile become hopelessly enamoured of Eileen’s lovely face. Basil, on the whole, she began to rather like, though she still taunted and teased him mercilessly; but if he got at all sentimental, as he very much wanted to do, he was shut up in such a very summary fashion that it was quite an exercise in courage ever to approach the dangerous ground at all. With the doctor’s patients she was a great favourite. Being a poor practice, those who could usually fetched their medicines themselves, and others sent children; and for one and all Paddy had a cheery greeting, or a merry jest, from behind her rows of neatly-wrapped bottles. To a police sergeant, who started airing all his grievances at things in general at great length, she once said: “What’s the good of grumbling; it doesn’t really help matters a bit. Do you know, if I stopped to think now, and then tried to express my feelings, I should just hurl all these bottles at your head, and anyone else’s head who happened to come to the surgery.” The sergeant of police was so impressed that he went away quite thoughtfully, and the next time he fetched medicine he brought her half a score of new-laid eggs from his own fowl run. “I was thinkin’ about you findin’ it dull work corkin’ up them bottles,” he said a little shamefacedly, “and them’ll be as good as you got in the country, which you can’t say of many eggs in London.”