"That's right, M., you're going along well!" cried Tims, standing on the hearth-rug, with one hand under her short coat-tails, while she gulped her own tea, and ate two pieces of bread and butter put together. Milly ate hers and drank her tea daintily, looking meanwhile at her companion with wonder which gradually gave way to amusement. At length leaning forward with a dimpling smile, she interrogated very politely and quite lucidly. "Pardon me, sir, you are--? Ah, the doctor, no doubt! My poor head, you see!" and she drew her fingers across her forehead. Tims started, and grabbed her wig, as was her wont in moments of agitation. She stood transfixed, the teacup at a dangerous angle in her extended hand. "Good God!" she ejaculated. "You are mad and no mistake, my poor old girl." The "old girl" made a supreme effort to contain herself, and then burst into a pretty, rippling laugh in which there was nothing familiar to Tims's ear. She rose from her chair vivaciously and took the cup from Tims's hand, to deposit it in safety on the chimney piece. "How silly I was!" she cried, regarding Tims sparklingly. "Do you know I was not quite sure whether you were a man or a woman. Of course I see now, and I'm so glad. I do like men, you know, so much better than women." "Milly," retorted Tims, sternly, settling her wig. "You are mad, you need not be bad as well. But it's my own fault for giving you that brandy. You know as well as I do that I hate men--nasty, selfish, guzzling, conceited, guffawing brutes! I never wanted to speak to a man in my life, except in the way of business." Milly waved her amber head gracefully for a moment as though at a loss, then returned playfully, "That must be because the women spoil you so." Tims smiled sardonically; but regaining her sense of the situation, out of which she had been momentarily shocked, applied herself to the problem of calling back poor Milly's wandering mind. "Sit down, my girl," she said, abruptly, putting her arm around Milly's body, so soft and slender in the scanty folds of the blue dressing-gown. Milly obeyed precipitately. Then drawing a small chair close to her, Tims said in gentle tones which could hardly have been recognized as hers: "M., darling, do you know where you are?" Milly turned on her a face from which the unnatural vivacity had fallen like a mask; the appealing face of a poor lost child. "Am I--am I--in a _maison de sante_?" she asked tremulously, fixing her blue eyes on Tims, full of piteous anxiety. "A lunatic asylum? Certainly not," replied Tims. "Now don't begin crying again, old girl. That's how the trouble began." "Was it?" asked Milly, dreamily. "I thought it was--" she paused, frowning before her in the air, as though trying to pursue with her bodily vision some recollection which had flickered across her consciousness only to disappear. "Well, never mind that now," said Tims, hastily; "get your bearings right first. You're in Ascham College."