for if you look at the rest of the description of the man, you will find that he was in alliance with his apothecary for their mutual advantage, that he was a money-loving man, and that some of Chaucer's keenest irony is spent on him in an off-hand, quiet manner. Compare the tone in which he writes of the doctor of physic, with the profound reverence wherewith he bows himself before the poor country-parson." Here Wynnie spoke, though with some tremor in her voice. "I never know, papa, what people mean by talking about childhood in that way. I never seem to have been a bit younger and more innocent than I am." "Don't you remember a time, Wynnie, when the things about you--the sky and the earth, say--seemed to you much grander than they seem now? You are old enough to have lost something." She thought for a little while before she answered. "My dreams were, I know. I cannot say so of anything else." I in my turn had to be silent, for I did not see the true answer, though I was sure there was one somewhere, if I could only find it. All I could reply, however, even after I had meditated a good while, was--and perhaps, after all, it was the best thing I could have said: "Then you must make a good use of your dreams, my child." "Why, papa?" "Because they are the only memorials of childhood you have left." "How am I to make a good use of them? I don't know what to do with my silly old dreams." But she gave a sigh as she spoke that testified her silly old dreams had a charm for her still.