VII.

A QUARREL.

THAT same afternoon Mr MacGentle put his head into the outer office, and said,

Mr Dyke, could I speak with you a moment?"

Mr Dyke scraped back his chair and went in, with his polished bald head and square face and figure—a block of common sense. He was

more common-sensible than usual that afternoon, because he had so strangely forgotten himself in the morning. Mr MacGentle was in his usual position for talking with his confidential clerk - standing with his back to the fireplace and his coat-tails over his arms; experience had taught him that this attitude was better adapted than any other to sustain the crushing weight of Mr Dyke's sense. To

have conversed with him in a sitting position would have been to lose breath and vitality before the end of five minutes.

Mr Helwyse has thoughts of settling in Boston to practice his profession," began the President, gently. "I told him you would be likely to know what the chances are."

"Profession is-what?" demanded Mr Dyke, settling his fist on his hip.

"Oh-doctor-physician - eye-doctor, he

said, I think."

Eye-doctor? Well, there's Dr. Schlemm won't last the winter; may drop any day. Just the thing for Mr Helwyse-Dr Helwyse." And the subject being discussed at some length between the gentlemen, took on a promising aspect. His house was picked out for the new incumbent, his earnings calculated, his success foretold. Two characters so diverse as were the President and his clerk, united, it seems, in liking the young physician.

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Married?" asked Mr Dyke, after a pause.

"Why, no-no: and he doesn't seem inclined to marry. But he is quite young; perhaps he may later on in life, Mr Dyke."

The elderly clerk straightened his mouth. "Matter of taste, and policy! Gives solidity, position; and is an expense and a responsibility." Mr Dyke was himself well known to be the husband of an idolised wife and the father of a despotic family.

"He never had the advantage of woman's influence in his childhood, know. His poor

you

mother died in giving him and his sister birth; and his sister was lost, stolen away, two or three years later. He does not appreciate woman at her true value," murmured MacGentle.

"Stolen away? His sister died in infancy, so I understood, sir," said the clerk, whose ver

sions of past events were apt to differ from the President's.

But the President, perhaps because he was conscious that his memory was treacherous regarding things of recent occurrence, was abnormally sensitive as to the correctness of his more distant reminiscences.

"Oh no, she was stolen-stolen by her nurse just before Thor Helwyse went to Europe, I think," said he.

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Beg your pardon, sir!" said Mr Dyke, with an iron smile. "Died; burnt to death in her

first year; yes, sir!"

"Mr Dyke," rejoined MacGentle dignifiedly, lifting his chin high above his stock, "I have myself seen the little girl, then in her third year, pulling her brother's hair on the nursery floor. She was dark-eyed, a very lovely child. As to the burning, I now recollect that when the house in Brooklyn took fire, the child was in danger, but was rescued unharmed by the nurse, who herself received very severe injuries."

Mr Dyke heaved a long deliberate sigh, and allowed his eyes to wander slowly round the room, before replying,

"You are not a family man, Mr MacGentle, sir. Don't blame you, sir. Your memory, perhaps but no matter.-The nurse who stole the child was, I presume, the same who rescued her from the fire?"

Mr Dyke had perhaps intended to give a delicately ironical emphasis to this question, but his irony was much like himself, a very unwieldy and unmistakable affair. The truth was, he was a little staggered by the President's circumstantial statement, whence his deliberation, and his not entirely pertinent rejoinder about "a family man.”

And why not the same, sir? I ask you, why not the same?" demanded Mr MacGentle, with slender imperiousness.

But by this time Mr Dyke had thought of a new argument.