illy! As it happened, Dr.
King, too, set out upon the Perryville road that morning, remarking to
Jinny that if he had had his wits about him that night in November, she
would have been saved the trip on this May morning. The trip was easy
enough; William had found a medical pamphlet among his mail, and he was
reading it, with the reins hanging from the crook of his elbow. It was
owing to this method of driving that John Fenn reached the Roberts
house before Jinny passed it, so she went all the way to Perryville,
and then had to turn round to follow on his track.

"Brother went to see Miss Philly, and he wouldn't take me," Mary
complained to William King, when he drew up at the minister's door; and
the doctor was sympathetic to the extent of five cents for candy
comfort.

But when Jinny reached the Roberts gate Dr. King saw John Fenn down in
the garden with Philippa. "Ho-ho!" said William. "I guess I'll wait
and see if he works out his own salvation." He hitched Jinny, and went
in to find Philippa's father, and to him he freed his mind. The two
men sat on the porch looking down over the tops of the lilac-bushes
into the garden, where they could just see the heads of the two young,
unhappy people.

"It's nonsense, you know," said William King, "that Philly doesn't take
that boy. He's head over heels in love with her."

"She is not attached to him in any such manner," Henry Roberts said; "I
wonder a little at it, myself. He is a good youth."

The doctor looked at him wonderingly; it occurred to him that if he had
a daughter he would understand her better than Philly's father
understood her. "I think the child cares for him," he said; then,
hesitatingly, he referred to John Fenn's sickness. "I suppose you know
about it?" he said.

Philly's father bent his head; he knew, he thought, only too well; no
divine revelation in a disordered digestion!

"Don't you think," William King said, smiling, "you might try to make
her feel that she is wrong not to accept him, now that the charm has
worked, so to speak?"

"The charm?" the old man repeated, vaguely.

"I thought you understood," the doctor said, frowning; then, after a
minute's hesitation, he told him the facts.

Henry Roberts stared at him, shocked and silent; his girl, his
Philippa, to have done such a thing! "So great a sin--my little
Philly!" he said, faintly. He was pale with distress.

"My dear sir," Dr. King protested, impatiently, "don't talk about