CHAPTER VIII.
HER FATHER'S MESSAGE LOOKING out of the drawing-room window, for the tenth time at least, Mountjoy at last saw Iris in the street, returning to the house.
She brought the maid with her into the drawing-room, in the gayest of good spirits, and presented Rhoda to Mountjoy.
"What a blessing a good long walk is, if we only knew it!" she exclaimed.

"Look at my little maid's colour! Who would suppose that she came here with heavy eyes and pale cheeks?
Except that she loses her way in the town, whenever she goes out alone, we have every reason to congratulate ourselves on our residence at Honeybuzzard.

The doctor is Rhoda's good genius, and the doctor's wife is her fairy godmother." Mountjoy's courtesy having offered the customary congratulations, the maid was permitted to retire; and Iris was free to express her astonishment at the friendly relations established (by means of the dinner-table) between the two most dissimilar men on the face of creation.
"There is something overwhelming," she declared, "in the bare idea of your having asked him to dine with you--on such a short acquaintance, and being such a man! I should like to have peeped in, and seen you entertaining your guest with the luxuries of the hotel larder.
Seriously, Hugh, your social sympathies have taken a range for which I was not prepared.

After the example that you have set me, I feel ashamed of having doubted whether Mr.Vimpany was worthy of his charming wife.

Don't suppose that I am ungrateful to the doctor! He has found his way to my regard, after what he has done for Rhoda.