can't do that, Doctor; when I go to Mary, or send for her, on account
of homesickness, it must be hers, not mine."

"Well, Mrs. Reisen," said the Doctor, outside the street door, "I hope
you'll remember my request."

"I'll tdo udt, Dtoctor," was the reply, so humbly spoken that he
repented half his harshness.

"I suppose you've often heard that 'you can't make a silk purse of a
sow's ear,' haven't you?" he asked.

"Yes; I pin right often heeard udt." She spoke as though she was not
wedded to any inflexible opinion concerning the proposition.

"Well, Mrs. Reisen, as a man once said to me, 'neither can you make a
sow's ear out of a silk purse.'"

"Vell, to be cettaintly!" said the poor woman, drawing not the shadow of
an inference; "how kin you?"

"Mr. Richling tells me he will write to Mrs. Richling to prepare to come
down in the fall."

"Vell," exclaimed the delighted Mrs. Reisen, in her husband's best
manner, "t'at's te etsectly I atwised him!" And, as the Doctor drove
away, she rubbed her mighty hands around each other in restored
complacency. Two or three days later she had the additional pleasure of
seeing Richling up and about his work again. It was upon her motherly
urging that he indulged himself, one calm, warm afternoon, in a walk in
the upper part of the city.

CHAPTER XLV.

NARCISSE WITH NEWS.

It was very beautiful to see the summer set in. Trees everywhere. You
looked down a street, and, unless it were one of the two broad avenues
where the only street-cars ran, it was pretty sure to be so overarched
with boughs that, down in the distance, there was left but a narrow
streak of vivid blue sky in the middle. Well-nigh every house had its
garden, as every garden its countless flowers. The dark orange began to
show its growing weight of fruitfulness, and was hiding in its thorny
interior the nestlings of yonder mocking-bird, silently foraging down in
the sunny grass. The yielding branches of the privet were bowed down
with their plumy panicles, and swayed heavily from side to side, drunk
with gladness and plenty. Here the peach was beginning to droop over a
wall. There, and yonder again, beyond, ranks of fig-trees, that had so
muffled themselves in their foliage that not the nakedness of a twig
showed through, had yet more figs than leaves. The crisp, cool masses of
the pomegranate were dotted with scarlet flowers. The cape jasmine wore
hundreds of her own white favors, whose fragrance for