e in her was like a soft wind blowing
on the embers of her heart and kindling a flame for which she knew no
name. She thought constantly of Mary, and had many small anxieties
about her--her dress, her manners, her health; she even took the child
into Old Chester one day to get William King to pull a little loose
white tooth. Philly shook very much during the operation and mingled
her tears with Mary's in that empty and bleeding moment that follows
the loss of a tooth. She was so passionately tender with the little
girl that the doctor told Dr. Lavendar that his match-making scheme
seemed likely to prosper--"she's so fond of the sister, you should have
heard her sympathize with the little thing!--that I think she will
smile on the brother," he said.

"I'm afraid the brother hasn't cut his wisdom teeth yet," Dr. Lavendar
said, doubtfully; "if he had, you might pull them, and she could
sympathize with him; then it would all arrange itself. Well, he's a
nice boy, a nice boy;--and he won't know so much when he gets a little
older."

It was on the way home from Dr. King's that Philippa's feeling of
responsibility about Mary brought her a sudden temptation. They were
walking hand in hand along the road. The leaves on the mottled
branches of the sycamores were thinning now, and the sunshine fell warm
upon the two young things, who were still a little shaken from the
frightful experience of tooth-pulling. The doctor had put the small
white tooth in a box and gravely presented it to Mary, and now, as they
walked along, she stopped sometimes to examine it and say, proudly, how
she had "bleeded and bleeded!"

"Will you tell brother the doctor said I behaved better than the circus
lion when his tooth was pulled?"

"Indeed I will, Mary!"

"An' he said he'd rather pull my tooth than a lion's tooth?"

"Of course I'll tell him."

"Miss Philly, shall I dream of my tooth, do you suppose?"

Philippa laughed and said she didn't know.

"I hope I will; it means something nice. I forget what, now."

"Dreams don't mean anything, Mary."

"Oh yes, they do!" the child assured her, skipping along with one arm
round the girl's slender waist. "Mrs. Semple has a dream-book, and she
reads it to me every day, an' she reads me what my dreams mean.
Sometimes I haven't any dreams," Mary admitted, regretfully, "but she
reads all the same. Did you ever dream about a black ox walking on its
back legs? I never did. I don't want to. It me