"And a very pleasant neighbor too," observed Miss Hope to her gossips; "so different to Dr. Morgan, with that slatternly housekeeper of his always down at heels and talking to the postman at the gate. That Jean must be a treasure; it is a treat to look at her caps and aprons. I have been all over the house, and you could eat your dinner off the floor, as the saying is. Dr. Stewart drops in to see us very often; it brightens Charity to have a good chat with him. They have fine long arguments sometimes, only he always gets the best of it. He makes a rare commotion when he comes, for he always pulls up the blinds and throws up the windows, though I tell him not to expose our shabby old carpet. He had Charity and her couch out on the lawn the other evening; just fancy! and the poor thing has never been out for years. She was so pleased and excited that we all had a cry over it, and then he scolded us all round." It was quite true that the arrival of Dr. Stewart as their next-door neighbor made a great change in the little household at the Evergreens; the introduction of the masculine element diffused new life and activity. During his brief visits, for he seldom stayed long, it was wonderful how much Dr. Stewart contrived to effect. The close little parlor where Faith had toiled over weary books or sewn long seams by Cara's couch for ten monotonous years was a different place now. The obnoxious geraniums no longer blocked up the window, there was plenty of air and light; Faith no longer gasped with pale cheeks in the close oppressive atmosphere. On fine afternoons Miss Charity's couch was wheeled out under the apple-trees; the poor lady could watch the butterflies glancing round her, or the great brown bees humming round her neighbor's hive. Instead of Trench's 'Parables,' or D'Aubigné's 'Reformation,' suspicious green volumes in certain standard editions lay beside her. Faith had no need to stifle hardly-to-be-repressed yawns over Kingsley's 'Hypatia,' or 'Two Years Ago.' 'Laura Doone' and Black's 'Adventures of a Phaeton' held them enchained for hours. "I am afraid our tastes are demoralized, we are getting very lax and dissipated over our reading. It is very nice, but there is no method in it," sighed Miss Charity. "You have had solids for ten years, now your digestion needs a lighter form of nourishment; all work and no play dulls the brain as well as poor Jack," returned Dr. Stewart decidedly. He had come in for one of his brief, business-like visits; he was always dropping in somewhere, at the Vicarage, at Church-Stile House, at Elderberry Lodge, even at the Sycamores, where comely Mrs. Morris with her seven olive branches lived. He did not favor Brierwood Cottage often with his visits, but he constantly met Queenie going to and from her school, and walked beside her in animated conversation.