ch it seemed his duty to take an
interest. The child seemed stronger and better that autumn than he had
ever known her, and her mind had suddenly fastened itself upon certain
of her studies. She seemed very quick and very accurate, the doctor
thought, and the two traits do not always associate themselves.

He left the table and walked quickly to the west window, and, clasping
his hands behind him, stood looking out into the front yard and the
street beyond. The ground was already white and he gave a little sigh,
for winter weather is rarely a source of happiness to a doctor,
although this member of the profession was not made altogether
sorrowful by it. He sometimes keenly enjoyed a hard tramp of a mile or
two when the roads were so blocked and the snow so blinding that he
left his horse in some sheltering barn on his way to an impatient
sufferer.

A little way down the street on the other side was a house much like
his own, with a row of tall hemlocks beside it, and a front fence
higher and more imposing than his, with great posts at the gateway,
which held slender urns aloft with funereal solemnity. The doctor's
eyesight was not far from perfect, and he looked earnestly at the
windows of one of the lower rooms and saw a familiar sight enough; his
neighbor Mrs. Graham's face in its accustomed quarter of the sash. Dr.
Leslie half smiled as the thought struck him that she always sat so
exactly in the same place that her white cap was to be seen through
the same lower window-pane. "Most people would have moved their chairs
about until they wore holes in the floor," he told himself, and then
remembered how many times he had gone to look over at his placid
friend, in her favorite afternoon post of observation. He was strongly
attached to her, and he reminded himself that she was growing old and
that he must try to see her oftener. He valued her companionship, more
because he knew it was always ready for him, than because he always
availed himself of it, but the sense of mutual dependence made them
very familiar to each other when they did meet and had time for a bit
of quiet talk.

Dr. Leslie suddenly turned; he had watched long enough to make sure
that Mrs. Graham was alone; her head had not moved for many minutes;
and at first he was going out of the front door, from some instinct he
would hardly have been willing to acknowledge, but he resolutely
turned and went out to the dining-room, to tell Marilla, after his
usua