"Esther and I are not going to give you up so easily. Why, look here,
Frankie; I will tell you a secret. One of these days I mean to have a
nice little house of my own, and Esther and you shall come and live
with me, and I will go among my patients all the morning, and in the
evening I shall come home very lazy and tired, and Esther shall fetch
me my slippers and light the lamp, and I shall get my books, and you
will have your drawing, and Esther will mend our clothes, and we
shall be as cozy as possible."

"Yes, yes," exclaimed Dot, clapping his hands. The snug picture had
fascinated his childish fancy; Allan's fireside had obscured the
lights of paradise. From this time this imaginary home of Allan's
became his favorite castle in the air. When we were together he would
often talk of it as though it were reality. We had planted the garden
and furnished the parlor a dozen times over before the year was out;
and so strong is a settled imagination that I am almost sure Dot
believed that somewhere there existed the little white cottage with
the porch covered with honeysuckle, and the low bay-window with the
great pots of flowering plants, beside which Dot's couch was to stand.

I don't think Jack enjoyed these talks so much as Dot and I did, as
we made no room for her in our castle-building.

"You must not live with us, Jack," Dot would say, very gravely; "you
are only a girl, and we don't want girls"--what was I, I wonder?--
"but you shall come and see us once a week, and Esther will give you
brown bread and honey out of our beehives; for we had arranged there
must be a row of beehives under a southern wall where peaches were to
grow; and as for white lilies, we were to have dozens of them. Dear,
dear, how harmless all these fancies were, and yet they kept us