She laughed, as if highly amused, and said: "Well, about our dresses. You need a ball dress, so do I; for we shall have balls this winter, and if the children are well, we will go. I think, too, that you had better get a gray cloth pelisse, with a fur trimming. We dress so much at church." "Perhaps," I said. "And how will a gray hat with feathers look? I must first write father, and ask for more money." "Of course; but he allows you all you want." "He is not so very rich; we do not live as handsomely as you do." It was tea-time when we had finished our confab, and Alice sent me to bed soon after. I was comfortably drowsy when I heard Charles driving into the stable. "There he is," I thought, with a light heart, for I felt better since I had spoken to Alice of him. Her matter-of-fact air had blown away the cobwebs that had gathered across my fancy. I saw him at the breakfast-table the next morning. He was noting something in his memorandum book, which excused him from offering me his hand; but he spoke kindly, said he was glad to see me, hoped I was well, and could find a breakfast that I liked. "For some reason or other, I do not eat so much as I did in Surrey." Alice laughed, and I blushed. "What do you think, Charles?" she said, "Cassandra seems worried by the influence, as she calls it, you have upon each other." "Does she?" He raised his strange, intense eyes to mine; a blinding, intelligent light flowed from them which I could not defy, nor resist, a light which filled my veins with a torrent of fire. "You think Cassandra is not like you," he continued with a curious intonation. "I told her that your oddities never troubled me." "That is right." "To-day," I muttered, "Alice, I shall go back to school." "You must ride," she answered. "Jesse will drive you up," said Charles, rising. Alice called him back, to tell him her plan of the Boston visit. "Certainly; go by all means," he said, and went on his way. I made my application to father, telling him I had nothing to wear. He answered with haste, begging me to clothe myself at once. CHAPTER XVII. It was November when we returned from Boston. One morning when the frost sparkled on the dead leaves, which still dropped on the walks, Helen Perkins and I were taking a stroll down Silver Street, behind the Academy, when we saw Dr. White coming down the street in his sulky, rocking from side to side like a cradle. He stopped when he came up to us. "Do ye sit up late of evenings, Miss Morgeson?" "No, Doctor; only once a week or so." "You are a case." And he meditatively pulled his shaggy whiskers with a loose buckskin glove. "There's a ripple coming under your eyes already; what did I tell you? Let me see, did you say you were like father or mother?" "I look like my father. By the way, Doctor, I am studying my temperament. You will make an infidel of me by your inquiries."