The Arkansaw traveler., 1886-01-30

them, anu IT you CnSAk, Ot course N uOt telling your fortune at all" "And what event does the 'this year next year-now-neveri refer to, may ask 2" this with a stolid look of ignor- ance on his face.
 Patience flushed pretty red, and be- gan to feel that she was being led on.
 Just to anything you like," she an- swered, with little toss of her head "to anything you want very much. If you were a sailor, don't you see, you'd tell your beads to find out when you'd be an admiral; if you were curate, when you'd be bishop, and SO on and if you were girl like me, shut up in big dreary house, you'd tell your beads to find out when you'd get out of it."
 All this time Frank had been steadily looking at her.
 "I'm sure you are Miss Meredith, the doctors niece" he said as she finished speaking, "from your likeness to your mothers picture. My mother has it at home. She and your mother were very great friends in their early days"
 Naturally they felt upon easy and friendly terms alter this. Patience told him how that she had been only three 1 days home from school.
 Uncle Richard has been goodness itselfto me, but always kept me at school made me even spend my holidays there. This is my first glimpse of home and home life, and-"here she hesitated, broke of, began again, then added And if it were not for Jack, shouldn't know what to do with myself"
 Jack is handsome fellow" said Frank, trying to make advances of friend ship with him, which the bird, perched now upon the top of his cage, indignantly repelled. "Where does he come from p
 "Uncle Richard says he came from Leadenhall market, but don't believe it. don't believe Jack-that's my cousin, my only cousin, midshipman, who gave the bird to me-would play me such shabby trick as pretend to bring it for me all the way from Australia when he had only gone into London market for it."
 An, midshipmen do funny things | sometimes l"
 "But not that sort of funny thlng," she protested indignantly. "l'm certain Jack wouldn't be so contemptible. He's thorough sailor everything that's noble, and frank and generous. adore sailors don't you f
 don't know. Do you mean in the abstract or in the concrete ?"
 Patience thought for moment No; she wouldn't tell him that she had only had boarding-school education, and didn't know what he meant.
 "Why, in midshipman's uniform, of course," she answered brightly. "What else could mean2 ltold you Jack was midshipman."
 "Oh, midshipmen are too microscopic to have an opiAion about" said Frank loftily.
 Patience was put out and showed it.
 Not, however, by biting retort, but by walking straight to Jacks cage, taking him on her finger, and saying between showers of kisses:
 "Dear, darling old Jack don't know what in the world should do without you l"
 Frank was very penltent.
 suppose it must be horribly dull for you here. You've no near neighbors, have you? p he asked all anxiety to atone for any slight he had seemed to pass upon the members of the young lady's favorite profession.
 Not a visitable soul within fifteen miles! The darling old pet it wasp This to the cockatoo.
 The house does seem little cut of from the world-a trife quiet, mean," said Frank, feeling that he was speaking very much within the mark.
 Not that"
 "Dreary, gruesome, perhaps9"
 "No."
 "Worse than that even! I'm at loss then. Please give me the right word." Patience lowered her voice to a solemn whisper.
 "lt's-it's church-yardy," she said "there's no other word for it. Oh-h p This added with visible start, as the door at this moment opened and the doctor made his appearance.
 A remarkable-looking man, certainly. Originality, carried to the verge of gro- tesqueness," might have been the verdict passed upon sture's handiwork as ex- empli6ed in the person of Dr. Richard Meredith. In age he might have been about sixty. He was of middle height, and his unusually large head was cov- cred with a mass of tight-curling iron- gray hair. His eyebrows were marked his eyes too deep seated for any one to be able to tell what color they were. His pose was handsome aquiline; his mouth might have been handsome also had it not somehow acquitted the remarkable habit of nibbling its own upper lip in a fashion that forcibly recalled a hungry rabbit. Add to this habit another equally exceptional-that of moving the entire scalp of the head at will, on an average three times in the course of as many minutes-and the portrait of pr. Mere di,h is complete.
 Jack, from within his cage, Tapped his wings and recommended his wild screech- ings. ltwas evidently his playf ful method of greeting people.
 Smother that bird, Patience :" said the doctor in short, incisive tones which might have been beaten time to, SO regu. lar they were.
 Patience pushed away the footstool near which she was standing, snatched-