"To my mind he is come to tell me that he has fallen head over heels in love with little Dorothy, and wants to marry her;" and with the thought a broad smile crept up to the lips the white beard covered.
He had never been in love himself—but, for all that, he always sympathized with young folks in their tender affairs of the heart, and many a secret sigh escaped his lips for the lost opportunities of the past.
"Well," he began, brusquely, "why don't you proceed, my boy?"
"It is such a delicate matter," began Kendal, "that I scarcely know how to frame the words. You have always been so kind to me in the past, that the remembrance of it has led me to dare hope that your goodness will not desert me in the present emergency."
"Well," said the old gentleman, rather enjoying the young man's evident discomfiture, "pray go on."
"The boon I have to ask," began Kendal, "will either make or mar my future."
"Is it so bad as that?" returned the old gentleman with assumed innocence.
"You could never imagine what it is that I wish to ask," continued the young man.
"I might guess, perhaps," laughed the doctor, with a roguish twinkle in his eye.
"Surely you—you couldn't have noticed the one great wish of my heart," gasped Kendal. "I—"