the picture he drew of the right sort, which, it
is needless to add, was not a congenial type.

"An acquiescent fool for a son-in-law, a kind of gentlemanly valet!"
And, "That, I trust, will be the end. Maud as a mother would be
atrocious."

His daughter gave the doctor a certain kind of scientific interest.
She harked back, so to speak, to former generations, perverting their
simple instincts. Her devotion to the Salvation Army for one winter,
he pointed out to his wife, was a recrudescence of the old Puritan
pastor in his revivalist days. This manifestation would not be
permanent, for there were so many other desires crowding each other in
her brain. Just now she had developed a longing for art. The doctor
had been obliged to exert himself to prevent her sudden departure for
Paris, where she pictured herself living on two francs a day at the
top of a very dirty flight of stairs.

"Perhaps she will elope," the doctor said to his wife, humorously.
"But she won't elope with a mere man: she will go off with an idea and
then come around to the front door to be taken back."

"I don't think she is very considerate," Mrs. Thornton hinted. Maud
treated her at times with toleration. The doctor understood what that
meant--her lack of sympathy with her mother's clinging to her family;
deluging the Thornton house with Ellwells and their affairs.

"If she would only cultivate some serious interests, yours, and take
the place of a son," thus Mrs. Thornton referred to her husband's
youth and its sacrifices.

"I haven't any use for women doctors," Thornton replied; "and Maud as
a nurse scrubbing floors would be more absurd than Maud in an Army
Rescue Post."

For the art fever, however, the doctor felt to some extent
responsible. He had allowed young Addington Long a certain right of
way in the house. Long was the son of an old friend, a Camberton man,
who had wrecked himself early in his career. Doctor Thornton had taken
the boy out of his squalid home, sent him to a boarding-school, and
then, as he promised well, paid his way at Camberton. The young fellow
had not done anything remarkable, merely grown into a nice gentlemanly
manhood, with a taste for illustrating, by which he picked up a few
dollars for spending-money, and placed himself pleasantly in Camberton
circles. When he graduated, Dr. Thornton fell in with his suggestions
that he should like to try his fortunes as an artist. So Long had
spent several years in a stu