I've known him go on in this way about children before--though I must own, not quite so wildly, perhaps, as he talked just now." "Do you think he'll do anything imprudent about the child?
Poor thing! I'm sure I pity her as heartily as anybody can." "I don't presume to think," answered the doctor, calmly pressing the blotting-paper over the address he had just written.

"Valentine is one of those people who defy all conjecture.

No one can say what he will do, or what he won't.

A man who cannot resist an application for shelter and supper from any stray cur who wags his tail at him in the street; a man who blindly believes in the troubles of begging-letter impostors; a man whom I myself caught, last time he was down here, playing at marbles with three of my charity-boys in the street, and promising to treat them to hardbake and gingerbeer afterwards, is--in short, is not a man whose actions it is possible to speculate on." Here the door opened, and Mr.Blyth's head was popped in, surmounted by a ragged straw hat with a sky-blue ribbon round it.

"Doctor," said Valentine, "may I ask an excellent woman, with whom I have made acquaintance, to bring the child here to-morrow morning for you and Mrs.
Joyce to see ?" "Certainly," said the good-humored rector, laughing.