it with her."

"And how about your Presbyterian conscience?" Still with a twinkle.

"Silenced, for the present. But look at it quickly for the silence may
not last. It seemed that I simply had to help mother, in spite of
herself. And there was no other way. All the same I shall despise myself
when I get time to think."

The doctor took the paper with a smile. "When that time comes I shall
argue with you, though argument rarely affects feeling. To my mind you
are doing an eminently sensible thing."

He opened the paper and peered at it under the lamp; looked quickly up
at the girl's eager face and then from her to the paper again.

"What is it?" she asked anxiously.

"Why--I don't know. Where did you get this?"

"In the secret drawer of father's desk."

"Was the prescription always kept there?"

"Yes."

The doctor folded the paper again and handed it to her. "Does this look
like the prescription?"

"Yes, of course. It is the prescription."

"I'm afraid not. Come and look."

Esther seized the paper eagerly and saw--a neatly written recipe for
salad dressing!

Hot and cold with mortification, she stared at it blankly. "I have been
nicely fooled," she said in a low voice.

"Am I permitted to smile, or would it hurt your feelings?"

"It is not at all funny! Of course the real prescription has been
removed. She must have suspected. You see, I asked her to let me have
it. Oh!" with sudden shame and anger. "She guessed that I might take it,
don't you see?"

"I am afraid you are right. But now at least I should think that you
have done your whole duty. It would look as if Mrs. Coombe was herself
aware of the inadvisability of continuing this prescription. Why else
should she be so careful to prevent you showing it to me? At the same
time she is determined to go on using it. We cannot prevent her."

"Can we do nothing?"

"When I see her I shall be better able to judge."

"But she is going away."

"Then we must wait. If it is, as I suspect, a case of disordered nerves
aggravated by improper treatment, the instinct is strongly for
concealment. Do you find, for instance, that Mrs. Coombe is not as frank
in other matters as she used to be?"

A shamed blush crimsoned the girl's cheek, but the doctor's tone was
compelling and she answered in a low voice: "Yes, I think so."

"Don't look like that. It is only a symptom of something rotten in the
nervous system."

"Isn't there such a thing as character?" bl