“Good-night, David,” said Elizabeth Chantrey. She would have passed on, but to her surprise David made no movement. He was looking at her.

“This is where I first saw you, Elizabeth,” he said in a remembering voice. “You had on a grey dress, like that one, but Mary was in blue, because Mr. Mottisfont would n't let her wear mourning. Do you remember how shocked poor Miss Agatha was?-'and their mother only dead a month!' I can hear her now.” Mary-yes, he remembered little Mary Chantrey in her blue dress. He could see her now-nine years old-in a blue dress-with dark curling hair and round brown eyes, holding tightly to Elizabeth's skirts, and much too shy to speak to the big strange boy who was Edward's friend.

Elizabeth watched him. She knew very well that he was not thinking of her, although he had remembered the grey dress. And yet-for five years-it was she and not Mary to whom David came with every mood. During those five years, the years between fourteen and nineteen, it was always Elizabeth and David, David and Elizabeth. Then when David was twenty, and in his first year at hospital, Dr. Blake died suddenly, and for four years David came no more to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake went to live with a sister in the north, and David's vacations were spent with his mother. For a time he wrote often-then less often-finally only at Christmas. And the years passed, Elizabeth 's girlhood passed, Mary grew up. And when David Blake had been nearly three years qualified, and young Dr. Ellerton was drowned out boating, David bought from Mrs. Ellerton a share in the practice that had been his father's, and brought his mother back to Market Harford. Mrs. Blake lived only for a year, but before she died she had seen David fall headlong in love, not with her dear Elizabeth, but with Mary-pretty little Mary-who was turning the heads of all the young men, sending Jimmy Larkin with a temporarily broken heart to India, Jack Webster with a much more seriously injured one to the West Coast of Africa, and enjoying herself mightily the while.