tumbled over you in the
snow-drift. Never heard of you, indeed. But then I had a chance to
help you, and right away I liked you. So I've been down-town, this
afternoon, and bought you this outfit. Between you and me, Towsley, I
shouldn't care for the velvets, either. But they must have been all
that Miss Armacost had on hand and so she gave them to you. These I'm
not giving; I'm simply advancing. Men like us don't care to accept
what we can't pay for, you know. Anything that Miss Lucy will offer
you, you'll have a chance to repay: by love, and attention, and the
deference that a son of her own house would render a gentlewoman who
befriended him. But you'll have no further use for me, and so I'm
merely lending you this suit. If you should ever be able, as you may,
to collect what I've spent on it--about five dollars--you just
remember the wandering kindness and send it along. I'd get a scrap of
paper, if I were you, and write it down: 'Five dollars received of Dr.
Frank Winthrop'; and when you use something for some needy person,
consider that it is so much toward the liquidation of the debt and
write it opposite: 'Paid Dr. Frank Winthrop, so and so.' Understand?"

"Yes. I will repay, too. Though I'd rather do it to you, yourself."

"Doubtless. Yet that doesn't matter. The real thing is to be
systematic and exact in our charities. Slovenliness or carelessness in
such things is worse than a bad habit--it's a sin. Now, how are you? A
trifle queer in the legs, eh? Things in the room look a bit hazy?
That's all right. Effect of an active boy lying in bed. The air will
set you straight. My! but you are a dandy in that suit! Fits you like
a duck's bill in the mud, doesn't it?"

Towsley laughed, so gayly and loudly that anxious Miss Lucy tiptoed to
the outside of the closed door and asked, eagerly:

"Can't I come in yet?"

The jolly doctor gave a nod of his head and Towsley opened to admit
his friend. In all his little life he had never been so well, so
completely clothed as he was at that moment; and the consciousness of
being suitably dressed went far toward giving him the ease of manner
which belonged to the "gentleman" whom he aspired to become.

The alteration in his appearance was so great and his bow so correctly
made that Miss Lucy cried out in delight and surprise, and was about
to throw her arms about the child and caress him before them all.

But the wise doctor prevented that, by saying in his quick way:

"