pleased.

It was late when she got in, and she expected her mother to be
annoyed; but Mrs. Caldwell was all smiles.

"I suppose the doctor found you?" she said. "He asked where you were,
and I said on the rocks probably."

"That accounts for the singular coincidence," Beth observed; but,
girl-like, she thought less at the moment of the little insincerity
than of the compliment his following her implied.

They dined that evening with Lady Benyon. It was a quiet little family
party, including Uncle James and Aunt Grace Mary. The doctor was the
only stranger present. He looked very well in evening dress.

"Striking, isn't he?" Aunt Grace Mary whispered to Beth. "Such
colouring!"

"And how are you, Dan?" was Uncle James's greeting, uttered with an
affectation of cordiality in his unexpected little voice that
interested Beth. She wondered what was toward. She noticed, too, that
she herself was an object of special attention, and her heart expanded
with gratification. Very little kindness went a long way with Beth.

Dr. Dan took her in to dinner.

"By the way," he said, looking across the table at Uncle James, "I
went to see that old Mrs. Prince, your keeper's mother, as I promised.
She's a wonderful old woman for eighty-five. I shouldn't be surprised
if she lived to a hundred."

"Dear! dear!" Uncle James ejaculated with something like
consternation.

"I seem to have put my foot in it somehow," Dr. Dan remarked to Beth
confidentially.

"If you do anything to keep her alive you will," Beth answered. "Uncle
James always speaks bitterly about elderly women;--about old ones he
is perfectly rabid. He seems to think they rob worthy men of part of
their time by living so long."

It was arranged before the party broke up that the doctor should drive
Beth to Fairholm in the Benyon dogcart to lunch next day. Beth was
surprised and delighted to find herself the object of so much
consideration. Dr. Dan, as they all called him, began to be associated
in her mind with happy days.

"Have you come to live here?" she asked as they drove along.

"No," he answered. "I am only putting in the time until I can settle
down to a practice of my own. I have just heard of one which I shall
buy if I can get an appointment I am trying for in the same place."

"What is the appointment?" Beth asked.

"It's a hospital I want to be put in charge of," he answered
casually,--"a small affair, but I should get a regular income from it,
and