wear skirts."

Jimmy flushed awkwardly. He did not altogether admire Dr. Gregg's
frankness; and yet he was grateful for the implied testimony to his
reformation, so he answered with a laugh, and, after a few minutes'
conversation, willingly consented to go up to dinner at the doctor's
that night. After all, it would be dull alone in the cottage, and he
knew that Ethel would not want him, as she, too, was dining out.

The doctor was an old bachelor, or at least the town assumed him to be
one. True, when he had first bought the practice, thirty years
previously, he had made no definite statement on the matter; and, for a
time, people had shaken their heads, and, on that purely negative
evidence, had done what they called "drawing their own conclusions." His
wife had run away from him, and they would hear of her one day, in
connection with some scandal, and she would allege, and probably prove,
that he had ill-used her. However, as months went by, and they did not
hear--in fact they never heard anything--they admitted they had been
wrong, and began to pity him as the husband of an incurable lunatic, who
was confined in an asylum near London. But even that story had died a
lingering death from sheer want of nourishment, and long before Jimmy
had appeared in the neighbourhood, even the mothers' meetings had ceased
to discuss the doctor's private affairs. He was just the gruff and
well-beloved friend of everyone in the place, a man of whom even the
preacher in the Peculiar People's chapel spoke with respect.

"Old friends of yours at Drylands, after all?" the doctor asked
abruptly, as they sat smoking in his study after dinner.

Jimmy nodded. "Yes, you got the name wrong, you see, and, naturally, I
didn't recognise it. I've known the Grimmers, or at least Mrs. Grimmer,
all my life."

"It's a bad thing to get out of touch with people you know," the other
went on. "A very bad thing. Never have a family quarrel, if you can
avoid it, Grierson, or, rather, never have another."

"How do you know I have had one?" Jimmy demanded.

The old man smiled. "You've as good as told me so, a score of times. Bad
things family quarrels. After all, your relations are your own flesh and
blood."

Jimmy did not answer; latterly, he had begun to realise the truth of
what the other was saying; and he knew more than ever the value of
peace.

For a little while they smoked in silence, then, "How did you happen to
light on this town in the f