Flint | Page 2

for the fortieth time.
"The weather is in a nasty, chilly sweat," he says grumpily; "if it were my patient, I would roll it in a blanket, and put it to bed with ten grains of quinine."
"Not being your patient, and not being dosed with quinine, it may be better to-morrow," Ben retorts saucily.
Ordinarily, the Doctor takes Ben's sallies with good-humored contempt. To-day, he is in other mood. He smiles--always a bad sign with him, as the natural expression of his truly benignant mood is a fierce little terrier-like frown.
"My poor boy!" he says sympathetically. "The brain is going fast, I observe. Steep a love-story, and apply it over the affected part!"
I see Ben wrestling with a retort; but before he has it to his mind, something happens. The door opens and a girl enters. Ben's face lights up. The sunshine has come.
There is something more than a suggestion of sunshine about Winifred Anstice, even to those of us who are neither of the age nor the sex to fall under the glamour of sentimental illusions. I have often speculated on the precise nature of her charm, without being able to satisfy myself. She is not so extraordinarily pretty, though her hair ripples away from her forehead after the American classic fashion, to which style also belongs the little nose, straight in itself, but set on at an angle from the brow, which, to my thinking, forms a pleasing variation from the heavier, antique type. The classic repose is wholly lacking. The eyes are arch, bright, and a little daring; the mouth always on the verge of laughter, which is not quite agreeable, for sometimes when there is no visible cause for amusement, it gives one an uncomfortable feeling that perhaps he is being laughed at unbeknown, and a person need not be very stingy not to relish a joke at his expense.
Perhaps this sounds as if Winifred were hard, which she is not, and unsympathetic, which she never could be; but it is not that at all. It comes, I think, of a kind of bubbling over of the fun and spirits which belong to perfect physical condition and which few girls have nowadays. I suppose I ought not to wonder if a little of this vigor clings to her manner, making it not hoidenish exactly, but different from the manner of Beacon Street girls, who, after all said and done, have certainly the best breeding of any girls the world over. Ben doesn't admire Boston young ladies; but then he hates girls who are what he calls "stiff," as much as I dislike those whom he commends as "easy." Of course he gets on admirably with Winifred, who accepts his adoration as a matter of course, and rewards him with a semi-occasional smile, or a friendly note in her voice.
After all, Winifred's chief charm lies in her voice. For myself, I confess to a peculiar sensitiveness in the matter of voices,--an unfortunate peculiarity for one condemned to spend her life in a sea-board town of the United States. Like Ulysses, I have endured greatly, have suffered greatly; but when this girl speaks, I am repaid. I often lose the sense of what she is saying, in the pure physical pleasure of listening to her speech. It has in it a suggestion of joy, and little delicate trills of hidden laughter which, after all, is not laughter, but rather the mingling of a reminiscence and an anticipation of mirth. I cannot conceive where she picked up such a voice, any more than where she came by that carriage of the head, and that manner, gracious, yet imperative like a young queen's. Professor Anstice is a worthy man and a learned scholar; but the grand air is not acquired from books.
"How glum you all look!" Winifred exclaims, as she looks in upon us.
At his daughter's entrance, the face of Professor Anstice relaxes by a wrinkle or two; but he answers her words as academically as though she had been one of his class in English.
"Glum is hardly the word, my dear; it conveys the impression of unamiability."
"Precisely," persists Mistress Winifred, not to be put down, "that is just the idea you all convey to me."
"Why shouldn't we be unamiable," answers Ben, eager to get into the conversation, "when there is nothing to amuse us, and you go off upstairs to write letters?"
"You should follow my example, and do something. When I went upstairs Miss Standish was in a terrible temper, scowling at the ace of spades as if it were her natural enemy; but since she has taken to writing in that little green diary that she never will let me peep into, she has a positively beatified, not to say sanctified, expression. And there is Ellen Davitt hard at work