"Such a disposition! And the older you grow the worse it
gets."
"Confound it, Martha!--"
"I do," said she.
Alicia looked at Richard with impersonal eyes. She looked at the
ruffled center of culture.
"Don't pay any attention to him, Miss Martha," she said, with a
charming smile. "Your poem is very pretty, and he knows it."
"He means well," said Miss Martha, resignedly.
"Now, you look here, Martha!" the doctor said angrily, "I won't have
anybody telling me to my face I mean well. You might as well call me
a fool outright."
"You are far from being a fool, Richard. And you do mean well.
Everybody knows that."
He turned appealingly to his dear Leetchy, and received his first
lesson in Domestic Science.
"Miss Martha is right, Richard," she decided.
"Leetchy," the doctor asked, when the mollified Miss Hopkins had
departed, "why did Martha go off grinning?"
"How should I know?" wondered Alicia, innocently. Then she looked at
him with Irish eyes: "Have you had your lunch, dear?" she asked.
"Lunch?" He looked bewildered.
"Because I'm going to fix Sophy's lunch now, and you may have yours
with her, if you like.
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