“But, my dear madam, it would be profanity here.”
“Then you shall be profane, doctor,” said the little lady, nodding and smiling, “but don’t let Arthur smoke. He tried once before when he had a friend to dinner, and it made him feel very, very sick.”
The Reverend Arthur raised his eyebrows in a deprecating way, and then shook his head sadly.
“Then I will not lure him on to indulgence in such a bad habit, Miss Rosebury,” said the little doctor. “In fact, I feel that I ought not to indulge myself.”
“Well, I really think it is very shocking, doctor!” said Miss Rosebury, merrily. “You, a medical man, and you have confessed to a love for whiskey, and now for tobacco.”
“No, no; no, no!” he cried holding up his hands. “They are nauseous medicines that I take to do me good.”
“Indeed!” said the little lady, lingering in the room, and hanging about her brother’s chair as if loth to go; and there was a very sarcastic ring in her voice.
“Oh, be merciful, Miss Rosebury!” said the doctor, laughing. “I am only a weak man—a solitary wanderer upon the face of the earth! I have no pleasant home. I have no sister to keep house.”
“And keep you in order,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling pleasantly.
“And to keep me in order!” cried the doctor. “Mine’s a hard life, Miss Rosebury, and with all a man’s vanity—a little man’s vanity, for we little men have a great deal of conceit to make up for our want of stature—I think I do deserve a few creature comforts.”
“Which you shall have while you stay, doctor; so now light your cigar, for I’ll be bound to say you have a store of the little black rolls somewhere about you.”
“I confess,” he said, smiling, “I carry them in the same case with a few surgical instruments.”
“But I think we’ll go into the little greenhouse, Mary,” said the Reverend Arthur. “I feel sure Harry Bolter would not mind.”
“Mind? My dear Miss Rosebury, I’ll go and sit outside on a gate and smoke if you like.”
“No, no,” said the Reverend Arthur, mildly; “the green fly are rather gaining ground amongst my flowers, and I thought it would kill a few.”
“Dr. Bolter is going to smoke his cigar here, where I am about to send in the coffee,” said Miss Rosebury, very decidedly, and the Reverend Arthur directed an apologetic look at his old friend.
“Hah!” ejaculated the little doctor, taking out his case, and selecting a cigar, “that’s just the kind of social tyranny I like. A man, sir, is stronger than a woman in physical development, but weaker in the matter of making up his mind. I never am able to make up mine, and I am quite sure, Arthur, old fellow, that you are very weak in the matter of making up yours: thus, in steps the presiding genius of your house, and bids you do this, and you do it. Yes, Miss Rosebury, I am going to sit here and smoke and—”
“I am ready with a light, Dr. Bolter,” said the little lady, standing close by with a box and a wax-match in her hands.
“No, no, really, my dear madam, I could not think of beginning while you are here.”
Scratch! went the match; there was a flash from the composition, and then Miss Rosebury’s plump taper little fingers held out the tiny wax-light, which was taken; there were a few puffs of bluish smoke, and Dr. Bolter sank back in his chair, gazing at the door through which Miss Rosebury had passed.
“Hah!” he ejaculated. “I shall have to be off to-morrow.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried the Reverend Arthur. “I thought you would come and stay a month.”
“Stay a month!” cried the doctor. “Why, my dear boy, what should I be fit for afterwards if I did?”
“Fit for, Harry?”
“Yes, fit for. I should be totally spoiled. I should become a complete domestic sybarite, and no more fit to go back to my tasks in the Malay jungle than to fly. No, Arthur, old fellow, it would never do.”
“We shall keep you as long as you can stay,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling. “But seriously, did you not exaggerate about those young ladies?”
“Not in the least, my dear boy, as far as regards one of them. The other—old Stuart’s little lassie—seems to be all that is pretty and demure. But I don’t suppose there is any harm in Helen Perowne. She is a very handsome girl of about twenty or one-and-twenty, and I suppose she has been kept shut up there by the old ladies, and probably, with the best intentions, treated like a child.”
“That must be rather a mistake,” murmured the Reverend Arthur, dreamily.
“A mistake, sir, decidedly. If you have sons or daughters never forget that they grow up to maturity; and if you wish to keep them caged up, let it be in a cage whose bars are composed of good training, confidence and belief in the principles you have sought to instil.”
“Yes, I quite agree with you, Harry.”
“Why, my dear boy, what can be more absurd than to take a handsome young girl and tell her that men are a kind of wild beast that must never be looked at, much more spoken to—suppressing all the young aspirations of her heart?”
“I suppose it would be wrong, Harry.”
“Wrong and absurd, sir. There is the vigorous young growth that will have play, and you tighten it up in a pair of moral stays, so to speak, with the result that the growth pushes forth in an abnormal way to the detriment of the subject; and in the future you have a moral distortion instead of a healthy young plant. Ha—ha!—ha—ha!”
“Why do you laugh?” said the Reverend Arthur. “I think what you have said quite right, only that ladies like the Misses Twettenham are, as it were, forced to a very rigid course.”
“Yes, yes, exactly. I was laughing because it seems so absurd for a pair of old fogies of bachelors like us to be laying down the law as to the management and training of young girls. But look here, Arthur, old fellow, as I am in for this job of guardian to these girls, I should like to have something intermediate.”
“Something intermediate? I don’t understand you. Thank you; set the coffee down, Betsey.”
“Hah! Yes; capital cup of coffee, Arthur,” said the doctor, after a pause. “Best cup I’ve tasted for years.”
“Yes, it is nice,” said the Reverend Arthur, smiling, as if gratified at his friend’s satisfaction. “My sister always makes it herself.”
“That woman’s a treasure, sir. Might I ask for another cup?”
“Of course, my dear Harry. Pray consider that you are at home.”
The coffee was rung for and brought, after a whispered conversation between Betsey the maid and Miss Mary the mistress.
“What did they ring for, Betsey?” asked Miss Mary.
“The little gentleman wants some more coffee, ma’am.”
“Then he likes it,” said Miss Mary, who somehow seemed unduly excited. “But hush, Betsey; you must not say ‘the little gentleman,’ but ‘Dr. Bolter.’ He is your master’s dearest friend.”
A minute or two later the maid came out from the little dining-room, with scarlet cheeks and wide-open eyes, to where Miss Mary was lying in wait.
“Is anything the matter, Betsey?” she asked, anxiously.
“No, ma’am, only the little Dr. Bolter, ma’am, he took up the cup and smelt it, just as if it was a smelling-bottle or one of master’s