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He expected that at his first footfall on the side porch his coming would be heralded by short, percussive barks,—Tatters’ greeting to his friends. He knocked twice, then tried the yielding door-knob, and entered the kitchen, where various saucepans, boiling over madly and deluging the polished stove with an impromptu pottage, told of some sort of domestic lapse. Crossing the hallway, guided by a light streak toward the first open door, he entered the sitting room at the moment that Miss Keith had raised her wet eyes from Tatters’ head, and was alternately rubbing them with her handkerchief, held in one hand, and looking at her answer to the disturbing letter, held in the other.

“Why, what is the matter, Miss Keith,—bad news or a love letter?” the doctor asked with the easy cheerfulness that showed how little real anxiety lay beneath the question. “The carrier said that you wished to see me to-day, and so I’ve come down, but I’d no idea that it was about a tearful matter, and one in which Tatters was too much involved to ‘watch out’ as usual.”