"I wish you would not read so much, my darling. You are always at the books. I have just found my History of Medicine open: what could you want with that?"
"I was reading about the circulation of the blood."
"Well, who discovered it?"
"William Harvey—I wish he had not."
"Why so?" asked my father, looking surprised.
"Because you would," I replied, passing my arms around his neck, and laying my cheek close to his.
He smiled, kissed my forehead, rose to go, took a few steps, came back, and, stooping over me as I lay on the bench, he pressed his lips to mine with lingering tenderness, then left me. I saw him enter the house. I heard him depart, and I even caught a glimpse of him and his grey mare as he rode up the steep path leading to Ryde. I looked and listened long after he had vanished and the tramp of the horse had ceased. Then turning once more towards the sea, I idly watched a fisherman's boat slowly fading away in the grey horizon, and thought all the time what a great man my father might hare been, if William Harvey had not unfortunately discovered the circulation of the blood two hundred years before. I lay there, dreaming the whole noon away, until Sarah came down the garden path in quest of me, and, in her mournful voice, observed—
"Miss Margaret, will you come in to tea?"
"No," I said coolly, "I won't yet."
Sarah turned up her eyes. I certainly was a spoiled child, and I dare say not over-civil; but I did not quite make a martyr of her, as she chose to imagine and liked to say.