arly about the head? If you don't, I would like to have it,
because without it the skeleton will not be perfect."

I wrote to Percy that I did not desire so much as a single hair of the
beast. I did not tell him so, but I despised the bears of Cathay.

It was just before the Christmas holidays when I finally made up my
mind that of all the women in the world the Doctor's daughter was the
one for me, and when I told her so she did not try to conceal that
this was also her own opinion. I had seen the most charming qualities
in other women, and my somewhat rapid and enthusiastic study of them
had so familiarized me with them that I was enabled readily to
perceive their existence in others. I found them all in the Doctor's
daughter.

Her father was very well pleased when he heard of our compact. It was
plain that he had been waiting to hear of it. When he furthermore
heard that I had decided to abandon all thought of the law, and to
study medicine instead, his satisfaction was complete. He arranged
everything with affectionate prudence. I should read with him,
beginning immediately, even before I gave up my school. I should
attend the necessary medical courses, and we need be in no hurry to
marry. We were both young, and when I was ready to become his
assistant it would be time enough for him to give me his daughter.

We were sitting together in the Doctor's library and had been looking
over some of the papers of the Walford Literary Society, of which we
were both officers, when I said, looking at her signature:
"By-the-way, I wish you would tell me one thing. What does the initial
'E.' stand for in your name? I never knew any one to use it."

"No," she said; "I do not like it. It was given to me by my mother's
sister, who was a romantic young lady. It is Europa. And I only hope,"
she added, quickly, "that you may have fifty years of it."

* * * * *

Three years of the fifty have now passed, and each one of the young
women I met in Cathay has married. The first one to go off was Edith
Larramie. She married the college friend of her brother who was at the
house when I visited them. When I met her in Walford shortly after I
heard of her engagement, she took me aside in her old way and told me
she wanted me always to look upon her as my friend, no matter how
circumstances might change with her or me.

"You do not know how much of a friend I was to you," she said, "and it
is not at all ne