The next morning being Monday, Dr. Campbell dropped in to breakfast. Since he and Eva had met so often in Maggie's sick room, and he had discussed the direction of her physical well-being, he had rapidly grown in intimacy with the Hendersons, and the little house had come to be regarded by him as a sort of home. Consequently, when Eva sailed into her dining-room, she found him quietly arranging a handful of cut flowers which he had brought in for the center of her breakfast table.
"Good morning, Mrs. Henderson," he said, composedly. "I stepped into Allen's green-house on my way up, to bring in a few flowers. With the mercury at zero, flowers are worth something."
"How perfectly lovely of you, Doctor," said she. "You are too good."
"I don't say, however, that I had not my eye on a cup of your coffee," he replied. "You know I have no faith in disinterested benevolence."
"Well, sit down then, old fellow," said Harry, clapping him on the shoulder. "You're welcome, flowers or no flowers."
"How are you all getting on?" he said, seating himself.
"Charmingly, of course," said Eva, from behind the coffee-pot, "and as the song says, 'the better for seeing you.'"
"And how's my patient—Maggie?"
"Oh, she's doing well, if only people will let her alone; but her mother, and uncle, and relations will keep irritating her with reproaches. You see, I had got her in beautiful training, and she was sewing for me and making herself very useful, when, Sunday evening, when I was gone out, her uncle came to see her, and talked and bore down upon her so as to completely upset all I had done. I came home and found her just going out of the house, perfectly desperate."