"Well, Uncle Richard! I am so rejoiced that you are getting better. You'll come and dance at our housewarming yet."
"Are you going to hold one?" asked the doctor, as he held her hand in his, and gazed up at her beauty.
"Mark and I are thinking of it. We can do everything, you know, now that that money's coming to me."
"Ah," said the doctor, "it's about that money I want to talk to you. Sit down, Caroline. How smart you are, my dear!"
"Nay, I think it's you who are smart uncle," she returned with a gay laugh. "So it has come into use at last!"
Caroline touched the dressing-gown as she spoke. There had always been a joke about this dressing-gown. A patient of the doctor's, as fanciful as Lady Oswald and nearly as old, had made it with her own hands and sent it to him. It had remained unused. For one thing, the doctor was too plain in his habits and too busy a man to require a dressing-gown at all; for another he had looked upon the garment as extravagantly fine.
"Yes," said he, in answer to Caroline's remark, "I have found it useful today. It is very warm and comfortable. Caroline, I have been talking again to Mark about the money."
"Well, uncle?"
"I don't know that it is well. Mark does not appear inclined to make me any promise that it shall be settled upon you when it comes. I urged it upon him very strongly this afternoon, and he answered me in his light careless manner, 'Of course. O yes doctor, I'll remember;' but he did not give a specific promise; whether by accident or design, I cannot say. So I told him to send you down to me."
"Yes, uncle," she said, thinking more of the weakness of the voice to which she was listening, than of the import of the words.