“Do, for mercy’s sake, go, if you have any regard for me.” Thus appealed to, the doctor sought his room. Once there, he surveyed the scene. Every article was carefully laid out in the most perfect order. He had only thought of the new claw-hammer, and here was evidently the preconceived design for a perfect change of every rag. Every article was placed where it should naturally come in the order of dressing. New toilet articles, scented soaps, hot water—everything silently commanding him to fall into line. First there escaped from the good doctor a smothered laugh; then a protest, and then—submission to the letter. He set about the work of rejuvenation with a perfect fury of dispatch, and when he found he should be ready in time, the spirit of fun seized him. He kept opening his door and bawling to his wife his distress at a thousand imaginary oversights and delinquencies. Once he declared she had forgotten his “pouncet box,” then his “hoops,” his “chignon,” his “chemisette,” his “gored waistcoat,” and lastly, in an agony, he called for tweezers, pretending he had discovered one hair too many in his “back hair.” But finally he emerged radiant, and sought Clara at once. “Behold me, my daughter!” he said in a tragic voice, applying a delicate, scented pocket handkerchief to his lips. “Are you resigned to your fate now?” “Why, we thought you were crazy, papa,” said Clara; “but how quickly you have performed all this change. I must say you are looking magnificent. You are one of the very few men I ever saw, who look well in a dresscoat.” “Well, I came to you for sympathy. Is this my reward?” “I can’t pity you in the least, papa; you are too sweet.” “Yes, I am,” he said, sniffing the perfume of his fine handkerchief. “Here, take this, Linnie. I must go and see if I can’t find a handkerchief that will not make me smell so much like a lady’s maid.” Leila and Linnie both laughed. “You’ll have to smell sweet to-day, papa,” they said, “for mamma has kept all your clothes in a drawer with a perfume sachet, these two weeks!” He left the room to a perfect chorus of laughter, and a few minutes later might have been seen in his study, diligently puffing at his pipe, first for his own comfort, and then to do what he could, at that late hour, to render negative the effect of Mrs. Forest’s sachets. Notwithstanding all the perturbation of Mrs. Forest, the whole “show” went off in the most perfect order, and without the slightest “impropriety” of any kind. Clara was not flushed, like a hoydenish country bride, but looked very pale and “interesting;” while the bridegroom, in every word and motion, was perfection itself in her eyes, no less than in Clara’s, though judged from a very different standpoint. CHAPTER XXI. THE NUCLEUS OF THE FLOWER BUSINESS.