deaths, and the intricate genealogies of her class. For his part he
rancorously hated hydropathics, having once spent a black week under
the roof of one in his wife's company. He detested the food, the
Turkish baths (he had a passionate aversion to baring his body
before strangers), the inability to find anything to do and the
compulsion to endless small talk. A thought flitted over his mind
which he was too loyal to formulate. Once he and his wife had had
similar likings, but they had taken different roads since their
child died. Janet! He saw again--he was never quite free from
the sight--the solemn little white-frocked girl who had died long
ago in the Spring.

It may have been the thought of the Neuk Hydropathic, or more likely
the thin clean scent of the daffodils with which Tibby had decked
the table, but long ere breakfast was finished the Great Plan had
ceased to be an airy vision and become a sober well-masoned
structure. Mr. McCunn--I may confess it at the start--was an
incurable romantic.

He had had a humdrum life since the day when he had first entered
his uncle's shop with the hope of some day succeeding that honest
grocer; and his feet had never strayed a yard from his sober rut.
But his mind, like the Dying Gladiator's, had been far away.
As a boy he had voyaged among books, and they had given him a world
where he could shape his career according to his whimsical fancy.
Not that Mr. McCunn was what is known as a great reader.
He read slowly and fastidiously, and sought in literature for one
thing alone. Sir Walter Scott had been his first guide, but he read
the novels not for their insight into human character or for their
historical pageantry, but because they gave him material wherewith