"I've heard your ma say 'ain't' wa'n't proper," he observed virtuously. "I shouldn't have mentioned it, only--well, seein' as how you're gettin' so awful particular----!" For the more telling effect he left the sentence unfinished. Again Margaret did not seem to hear. Again her eyes had sought the patch of blue showing through the green leaves. "Dr. Spencer may be nice now, but he ain't a husband yet," she said, thoughtfully. "There was Tim Sullivan and Patty's father and Mike Whalen," she enumerated aloud. "And they was all---- Bobby, was your father a good husband?" she demanded with a sudden turn that brought her eyes squarely round to his. The boy was silent. "Bobby, was he?" Slowly the boy's eyes fell. "Well, of course, sometimes dad would"--he began; but Margaret interrupted him. "I knew it--I just knew it--I just knew there wasn't any," she moaned; "but I can't make mother see it--I just can't!" This was but the first of many talks between Margaret and Bobby upon the same subject, and always Margaret was seeking for a possible averting of the catastrophe. To convince her mother of the awfulness of the fate awaiting her, and so to persuade her to abandon the idea of marriage, was out of the question, Margaret soon found. It was then, perhaps, that the idea of speaking to the doctor himself first came to her. "If I could only get him to promise things!" she said to Bobby. "If I could only get him to promise!" "Promise?" "Yes; to be good and kind, you know," nodded Margaret, "and not like a husband." Bobby laughed; then he frowned and was silent. Suddenly his face changed. "I say, you might make him sign a contract," he hazarded. "Contract?" "Sure! One of them things that makes folks toe the mark whether they wants to or not. I'll draw it up for you--that's what they call it," he explained airily; and as Margaret bubbled over with delight and thanks he added: "Not at all. 'Tain't nothin'. Glad ter do it, I'm sure!" For a month now Bobby had swept the floor and dusted the books in the law office of Burt & Burt, to say nothing of running errands and tending door. In days gone by, the law, as represented by the policeman on the corner, was something to be avoided; but to-day, as represented by a frock coat, a tall hat, and a vocabulary bristling with big words, it was something that was most alluring--so alluring, in fact, that Bobby had determined to adopt it as his own. He himself would be a lawyer--tall hat, frock coat, big words and all. Hence his readiness to undertake this little matter of drawing up a contract for Margaret, his first client.