Aunt's given me some lettuce sandwiches and two
apple turnovers. One was for you, but I suppose I can eat them both. The
sugar's leaked all round the edge--lovely!"

The stern disciple of business watched her tie on her sun-bonnet with
mingled feelings. It began to look as if she was really going!

"Good-bye," said Ann.

Bubble's red face grew a shade redder.

"Just like a girl!" he said bitterly. "Because a man's got to deliver
two medicine bottles, off she goes and won't wait for him. And the
farthest I've got to go is over to Mrs. Nixon's. The whole thing won't
take five minutes."

Sun-bonnets are splendid things for hiding the face! Had Bubble seen
that slow smile of victory there is no telling what might have happened.
But he did not see it. And Ann was too good a general to exult openly.
Her answer was carefully careless. "I'll wait--if you'll hurry up!"

But the look which she threw after his hastily retreating figure was as
old as Eve.

Meanwhile the doctor and Esther, who had been so criminally careless of
professional appearances as to drive down Main Street with a picnic
basket protruding, were enjoying themselves with an enjoyment peculiar
to careless people. Esther had forgotten about the pile of uncorrected
school exercises which were supposed to form her Saturday's work; the
doctor had forgotten about the measles and the twins. Rain had fallen in
the night and the dust was laid, the trees were intensely green.

Neither of them knew exactly how this pleasant thing had come about,
although, as a matter of crude fact, Mrs. Sykes had played the part of
the god from the machine. This energetic lady had made the doctor's
professional career her peculiar care and it had occurred to her that,
as a resident physician, he was disgracefully ignorant of the
surrounding country. At the same moment she had remembered that
to-morrow was Saturday, and that for trapesing the country and
meandering around in outlandish places there was no one in town equal to
Esther Coombe.

"But," objected the doctor, "I hardly know Miss Coombe well enough to
ask a favour of her."

Mrs. Sykes opined that that didn't matter. "Land sakes," she declared,
"it would be a nice state of affairs if one huming-being couldn't do a
kindness to another without being acquainted a year or two." Besides,
Esther, as the old doctor's daughter, might almost be said to have a
duty toward the newcomer. Mrs. Sykes felt sure that Dr. Coombe would