By the time she had known him ten minutes, Sylvia had decided that she liked Dr. Severn immensely. He was a tall, rather gaunt man, with a thin, pale, clean-shaven face that bore traces of ill health or suffering in the hollow cheeks and the lines around the mouth; his hair was iron grey, rather long, and combed straight back from his broad forehead, and he had the brightest, keenest, pleasantest blue eyes that it was possible to imagine. His manner was so winning and jolly that he made everybody feel at home immediately. He seemed to know exactly the subjects about which boys and girls liked to talk, and to be able to enter into everything almost as if he were a boy himself. The four visitors soon found themselves chatting to him perfectly freely, telling him of school scrapes and adventures, of plans for the summer holidays, and asking his opinion on various disputed points, while he, in turn, was full of jokes and reminiscences of his own far-off schooldays. "Never save the best till last!" he declared, handing round the cake long before the plates of bread and butter were finished. "I've kept to that motto ever since I was a small boy, and I had very good reason for adopting it. Once, when I was a little fellow of about seven years old, I was taken to pay a visit to an old lady who lived in the country. Children were brought up on the plainest fare in those days--porridge, and bread and milk, roast beef or mutton with potatoes, rice pudding or suet dumpling, with jam roly-poly, as a special treat on your birthday, was all that was considered good for us; so you can imagine I felt pleased when I saw a large pudding full of currants come on to the table at dinner-time. The old lady gave me a generous serving, and told me to help myself to as much sugar as I liked with it, assuring my mother that sweet things were necessary for children, a sentiment with which I cordially agreed then, whatever opinions my elders might hold. There were a great many currants in my slice of pudding, and it struck me how much nicer they would taste if I could eat them all together as a titbit at the last; so I picked them carefully out one by one, and put them to the side of my plate. I suppose it must have taken me rather a long time, or perhaps the others had smaller helpings; at any rate they had finished first, and all laid down their spoons and forks except myself. I gulped my last piece of pudding in a hurry, and was just going to enjoy my saved-up fruit, when the old lady, who had been watching me, said: "Poor boy! Isn't he fond of currants? Leave them, my dear; I would never force a child to eat what it doesn't like," adding a direction to the servant to take my plate away. I had had tremendous warnings before I came about behaving myself properly, and also I was much too shy to protest, so I was obliged to watch my cherished currants being whisked from the table before I had been able to taste a single one of them.