me up to thank me next day, and said that he was
quite uninjured save for a bruise on the back. His parents always send
me a brace of fowls every Christmas."

I was sitting with my finger in the hot water listening to this
rigmarole. When he had finished he ran off to get his tobacco box, and
we could hear the bellowing of his laughter dwindling up the stair. I
was still looking at the medal, which, from the dents all over it, had
evidently been often used as a target, when I felt a timid touch upon my
sleeve; it was Mrs. Cullingworth, who was looking earnestly at me with a
very distressed expression upon her face.

"You believe far too much what James says," said she. "You don't know
him in the least, Mr. Munro. You don't look at a thing from his point
of view, and you will never understand him until you do. It is not, of
course, that he means to say anything that is untrue; but his fancy is
excited, and he is quite carried away by the humour of any idea, whether
it tells against himself or not. It hurts me, Mr. Munro, to see the
only man in the world towards whom he has any feeling of friendship,
misunderstanding him so completely, for very often when you say nothing
your face shows very clearly what you think."

I could only answer lamely that I was very sorry if I had misjudged her
husband in any way, and that no one had a keener appreciation of some of
his qualities than I had.

"I saw how gravely you looked when he told you that absurd story about
pushing a little boy into the water," she continued; and, as she spoke,
she drew from somewhere in the front of her dress a much creased slip of
paper. "Just glance at that, please, Dr. Munro."

It was a newspaper cutting, which gave the true account of the incident.
Suffice it that it was an ice accident, and that Cullingworth had really
behaved in a heroic way and had been drawn out himself insensible, with
the child so clasped in his arms that it was not until he had recovered
his senses that they were able to separate them. I had hardly finished
reading it when we heard his step on the stairs; and she, thrusting
the paper back into her bosom, became in an instant the same silently
watchful woman as ever.

Is he not a conundrum? If he interests you at a distance (and I take
for granted that what you say in your letters is not merely conventional
compliment) you can think how piquant he is in actual life. I must
confess, however, that I can never shake off the fe