"jolly times," as he expressed it, which she had never known.

Dr. Howe was reading, with an indignant exclamation occasionally, a
scathing review of an action of his political candidate, and his big
newspaper hid the two young people by the fire, so that he quite forgot
them. Max seemed to feel that the responsibility of propriety rested upon
him, and he sat with his head on Lois's knee, and his drowsy eyes
blinking at Mr. Forsythe. His mistress pulled his silky ears gently,
or knotted them behind his head, giving him a curiously astonished and
grieved look, as though he felt she trifled with his dignity; yet he did
not move his head, but watched, with no affection in his soft brown eyes,
the young man who talked so eagerly to Lois.

"That brute hates me," said Mr. Forsythe, "and yet I took the trouble to
bring him a biscuit to-day. Talk of gratitude and affection in animals.
They don't know what it means!"

"Max loves me," Lois answered, taking the setter's head between her
hands.

"Ah, well, that's different," cried Forsythe; "of course he does. I'd
like to know how he could help it. He wouldn't be fit to live, if he
didn't."

Lois raised the hand-screen she held, so that Dick could only see the
curls about her forehead and one small curve of her ear. "How hot the
fire is!" she said.

Dr. Howe folded his newspaper with much crackling and widely opened arms.
"Don't sit so near it. In my young days, the children were never allowed