Very shortly after that first meeting I received from her a charming note, asking me to dine with her on a date not far distant. I telephoned a delighted acceptance, for, indeed, I wanted then, even as I did this morning, to convince myself that I was wholly in error concerning my interpretation of that incident concerning the thrush. Though I hold that no man has the right to accept the hospitality offered by one he does not like, in all points except one I admired and liked Lady Rorke immensely and wished to get rid of that one. So I gratefully accepted, and then hurried out on a dismal and overdue visit to the dentist’s. In the waiting-room was a girl of about twelve, with a hand nursing a rueful face, and from time to time she stifled a sob of pain or apprehension. I was just wondering whether it would be a breach of waiting-room etiquette to attempt to administer comfort or supply diversion, when the door opened and in came Lady Rorke. She laughed delightfully when she saw me. “Hurrah! You’re another occupant of the condemned cell,” she said, “and very soon we shall both be sent for to the scaffold. I can’t describe to you what a coward I am about it. Why haven’t we got beaks like birds?----” Her glance fell on the forlorn little figure by the window, with the rueful face and the wet eyes. “Why, here’s another of us,” she said. “And have they sent you to the dentist’s all alone, my dear?” “Y--yes.” “How horrid of them!” said Lady Rorke. “They’ve sent me alone, too, and I think it’s most unfeeling. But you shan’t be alone, anyhow, I’ll come in with you, and sit by you, if you like that, and box the man’s ears for him if he hurts you. Or shall you and I set on him, as soon as we’ve got him by himself, and take out all his teeth one after the other? Just to teach him to be a dentist.” A faint smile began the break through the clouds. “Oh, will you come in with me?” she asked. “I shan’t mind nearly so much, then. It’s--it’s got to come out, you know, and I mayn’t have gas.” Just the same gleam of a smile as I had seen on Lady Rorke’s face once before quivered there now, a light not of pity, surely. “Ah, but it won’t ache any more after that,” she said, “and after all, it is so soon over. You’ll just open your mouth as if you were going to put the largest of all strawberries into it, and you’ll hold tight on to my hand, and the dentist takes up something which you needn’t look at----” There was a want of tact in the vividness of this picture, and the child began to sob again. “Oh, don’t, don’t!” she cried. Again the door opened, and she clung to Lady Rorke. “Oh, I know it’s for me!” she wailed. Lady Rorke bent over her, scanning her terrified face. “Come along, my dear,” she said, “and it will be over in no time. You’ll be back here again before this gentleman can count a hundred, and he’ll have all his troubles in front of him still.”