"Me, Miss? Doing?" said the boy wonderingly. "I ain't a-been doing nothing. 'Tain't likely, 'mong all these here dangerous thinks;" and Bob waved his hand round the surgery, as if indicating the bottles and specimen jars.

"Because you have been warned frequently, sir, not to meddle."

"Course I have, Miss, and I wouldn't do no harm."

"Is my father asleep?"

"Jist like a top, Miss. He took his drops, and he's lying on the sofy, sleeping beautiful. You can hear him breathe if you come and put your ear to the keyhole."

"No, no," said Rich hastily; but, all the same, she walked quickly to the consulting-room door, and opened it softly, to look in and see across the table, with its chemical apparatus, the light of the shaded lamp thrown upon the calm, placid, handsome face, as the doctor lay back on the couch, taking his drug-bought rest according to his nightly custom.

Rich sighed and walked right in, the door closing behind her as she crossed the room, and stood gazing down, her head bent, and handy clasped, while for the moment she forgot her nerve-pains, and the tears started to her eyes.

"Poor father!" she sighed; "always so kind and gentle in spite of all.

How do I know what he may suffer beneath the mask he wears?"

She thought of the prosperity they had once enjoyed, the many patients who came, and how, in this very room, as a child, he used to play with her long curling hair, while she, with childlike delight, emptied the little wooden bowl, and counted how many guineas papa had received that morning.

She recalled, too, the carriage in which she had sat waiting, while he, the handsome young doctor, had made his calls upon rich patients; and then, like a cloud, came creeping up the memories of the gradual decline of his practice, as he had devoted himself more and more to the dream of his life--this discovery of a vital fluid which should repair the waste of all disease, and with the indulgence in his chimera came the poverty and despair.

"Poor father!" she sighed again, bending down and kissing the broad white forehead; "there has never been anything between us but love."

She rose slowly, went to a corner where a faded old dressing-gown hung upon a chair, and this she softly laid over the sleeping man, gazed at the fire, which was burning brightly, and then stole away with the agonising pang, forgotten for the moment, sweeping back, and seeming to drive her mad.

"I see yer a-kissing of him, Miss," said Bob, grinning, as she closed the door.

Rich turned upon him angrily; but the boy was looking dreamily towards the doctor, and rubbing his shock head of hair.

"Don't he look niste when he's asleep like that? There ain't such a good-looking gent nowhere's about here as our master."

There was so much genuine admiration in the boy's tones that the angry look gave place to one of half amusement, half pity.

"I've often wondered whether if ever I'd had a father, he'd ha' been like the doctor, Miss. Ain't yer proud on him?"

"Yes, Bob, yes," she cried, laying her hand upon the boy's shoulder, while a strange sensation of depression, as of impending trouble, came over her, making her forget everything, and hardly notice the next act of the boy.

It is hardly fair to say that Bob's hands were dirty, but they were very coarse in grain, and discoloured, the nails were worn down, and the fingers were blue with chilblains where they were not red with the chaps which roughened them; and those were the hands which took hold of Rich's and held it for a few moments against the boy's cheek; while he rubbed the said cheek softly against the smooth palm, his bright eyes looking up at her as a spaniel might at its mistress. In fact, there was something dog-like and fawning in the ways of the lad, till the hand was drawn away.

"So'm I proud on him, Miss. He is a good 'un. For it's like 'evin being here. Why, I've been here two years now, and he never kicked me once."

"And used you to be kicked before you came here, Bob?" said Rich, feeling amused, in spite of herself, at the boy's estimate of true happiness.

"Kicked, Miss? Ha, ha, ha! Why, it was 'most all kicks when it warn't pots. Old woman never kicked me; but when she'd had a drop, and couldn't get no more, she was allus cross, and then she'd hit you with what come first--pewter pot, poker, anything, if you didn't get out of the way."

Rich's brow contracted, and then for the moment the pain neutralised that of the mind.

"But she didn't often hit me," said Bob, grinning. "I used to get too sharp for her; and she didn't mean no harm. Want me to do anything, Miss?"

"No, Bob, no," said Rich, turning away to the shelves, where the bottles stood as in a chemist's shop. "Poor boy! and the place is to him like heaven!" she thought.

"Want some physic, Miss?" said the boy excitedly; "which on 'em? I knows 'most all on 'em now."

"I want the belladonna," said Rich, with her face contracted once more.

"Why, that's one o' they little bottles up a-top where they're all pisons! Whatcher want that for?" said Bob suspiciously. Then, as he read her countenance. "Whatcher got--toothache?"

Rich nodded.

"Here, hold hard! you can't reach it, Miss. Let me get on a chair. Oh, I say! Let me pull it out."

The boy's eager sympathy and desire to afford relief, grotesque as it was, seemed so genuine, so grateful to the lonely girl, that she smiled at her poor coarse companion's troubled face.

"No, no, Bob," she said gently.

"Wish I could have it instead," he cried. "I do, s'elp me!"

"It will be better soon, Bob," she said, as the boy climbed up and obtained the little stoppered bottle from the top shelf.

"That's good stuff for it, Miss," said the boy. "Bottle's quite clean.

I dusted all on 'em yesterday. Here, I know! let me put some on."

"You, Bob?" said Rich.

"Yes, Miss; I know. I've seen the doctor do it twiced to gals as come and wanted him to pull out their teeth, and he wouldn't. I'll show yer."

Bob ran to a drawer and took out a camel-hair pencil, and operated with it dry upon his own face.

"I'll show yer," he cried. "You begins just in front o' the ear and makes a round spot, and then yer goes on right down the cheek and along yer chin, just as if you was trying to paint whiskers. Let me do it, Miss."

Rich hesitated for a moment, and then sat down and held her face on one side, while the boy carefully painted the place with the tincture, frowning the while and balancing himself upon the tips of his toes.

"Stop a moment, Miss," cried Bob. "Then he dropped two drops out o'

this here blue bottle on a bit o' glass, and finished off with it just as you does with gum when you paint a picture."

Rich watched the boy anxiously as he took down a bottle labelled "Chloroform," but smiled and submitted patiently as the painting operation was completed.

"Feel better, Miss?" said the boy.

"Not yet, Bob; but I daresay this will do it good. Now put back those bottles, and don't meddle with them, mind."

"As if I didn't know, Miss! Why, I'm up to all the doctor's dodges now.

There ain't a bottle on any o' them shelves I ain't smelled; and look at them things in sperrits," he continued, pointing to the various preparations standing upon one shelf, the relics of the doctor's lecturing days. "I knows 'em all by heart. I had to fill 'em with fresh sperrit once."

Rich turned and smiled at the boy as she reached the door; and then once more the young student was left alone, to go and peep through the keyhole to see if the doctor was fast asleep, and this being so, he ran to the door by the street, turned suddenly with his head on one side, raised his hands with the helpless, appealing gesture of the sick, and walked feebly to the cushioned chest, upon which he sank, with a low moan.

It was a clever piece of acting, studied from nature, and sinking back, he lay for a moment or two sufficiently long for the supposed patient to compose himself, before he assumed another part.

Leaping up, he went on tiptoe to the consulting-room again, peeped to see that all was right, and then, drawing himself up exactly as he had seen the doctor act scores of times, he slowly approached the settee, his face full of smiling interest, and sitting down in a chair beside the imaginary patient, he went through a magnificent piece of pantomime--so good that it was a pity there was no audience present to admire. For Bob had taken the doctor's glasses from the chimney-piece, put them on, and bent over the patient.