DEAR FLORA,--Peter Mixon is getting worse, instead of better, every day. I have tried my best to get what I want; but there's always a crew of women about him, and he's as obstinate as a mule. If you could come down, you'd be in the house with him, and you might do something. Of course, if you get the paper I would make it a good thing for you. Can't you come this week? Patty Sanford is always round him when she is here; but she is in Boston now, and you'd have a better chance before she gets back. At all events, come as soon as you can. Yours truly, FRANK BRECK. "Uncle Jacob," Flora said to herself, refolding the letter, "I shall go to Montfield to-night. Don't you hope I may give you those papers when I get them?" CHAPTER XXXVIII. A TEST OF CIVILIZATION. "Now we shall see," Mr. Plant remarked to his niece as he led her down to dinner, "what stuff Mr. Blood is made of. There is no more crucial test of a man's civilization than the way in which he dines." "Poor Burleigh!" Patty said to herself. "Little do you dream of the ordeal before you." But Burleigh had received sundry very minute instructions from a city cousin who had taken it upon herself to prepare him a little for this important visit; and, although he eyed his turtle-soup doubtfully, he got through the first courses well enough. His diffidence was not wholly to his disadvantage, since he was so thoroughly in awe of his host as to treat him with a respect which Mr. Plant found very flattering. All went smoothly until what Flossy called the crisis of the dinner came. Dining was with Mr. Plant the chief business of life. Other employments were in his eyes simply artifices to kill the time which nature demanded for getting up a proper appetite. He came to this solemn culmination of the day with a mind prepared to hold in reserve his judgment of the success or failure of twenty-four hours of life until he had dined. "Father begins dinner," Flossy once said, "in good nature, because he thinks what a fine time he is going to have. By the time he is half way through, he has found enough things wrong to make him ready to be cross. Then he makes a curry, or a salad; and, if that succeeds, he comes out as happy and as gentle as a kitten." To-day it was unluckily a curry upon which the epicure expended his energies; and having compounded a dish which might have warmed the soul and the liver of an old East-Indian, Mr. Plant sent a portion to his guest with the complacent comment that Mr. Blood would certainly find it the most delicious curry he had ever tasted. Burleigh was just then talking to Patty. "I forgot to tell you," he said, "that Tom Putnam came on the train with me." "Tom Putnam!" exclaimed Patty. "What is he in Boston for?" inquired Flossy. "He is looking after that Smithers girl that ran off," Burleigh answered, absently conveying a generous portion of Mr. Plant's fiery preparation to his mouth. "Joe Brown's cousin, you know"--