"Unless he tells you?" said Faith smiling.
The doctor stood, half smiling; evidently revolving more thoughts than of one kind. With a face from which every shadow was banished he suddenly took a seat by Mrs. Derrick.
"Do you know," he said with gentle pleasantness of manner and expression, "how much better man I should be if I should come here and get only one definition a day from your little daughter?"
"What one has she given you now?" said Mrs. Derrick, whose mind evidently stood in abeyance upon this speech.
"One you didn't hear, ma'am. It was a definition of me, to myself. It isn't the first," said the doctor gravely. "Mrs. Derrick, are you friends with me?"
"As much as I ever was," said Mrs. Derrick, smilingly. "I always thought you wanted putting in order."
"How did you know that?"
"Why, because you were out of order," said Mrs. Derrick, knitting away.
The doctor uttered the lowest of whistles and looked down at his boot.
"It's because of that unlucky dog!" he muttered. "Linden—" (glancing up from under his eyebrows) "when I was a boy, I set my dog on Miss Faith's cat."
"Felt yourself called upon to uphold natural antipathies—"